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LESSORS 



FEOM 



EUROPEAN SCHOOLS 



THE AMERICAN CENTENNIAL 



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BY 



BIRDSEY GRANT NORTHROP, 



Secretary of Connecticut Board of Education. 



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NEW YORK & CHICAGO: 

A . S . BARNES & CO. 
1877. 






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CONTENTS 



Page 

Metric Chart, -_- 5-20 

Metric System, 21-58 

Metric Charts and Measures, 22 

" Hard Nomenclature," _ _ _ ^ 23 

If properly Taught, easily Learned, 24 

Early Advocated in America, 25 

Later Progress, .__ 27 

Progress in England, i._ ... 28 

German Experience, 31 

Origin of the System, _. 33 

Metric Tables, 35 

A Labor Saving Machine, :_. 42 

Metric Postage, _ 43 

Scientific Men Use it, 44 

Metrics and Manufacturing, 46 

Immigration Helpful, __ 50 

The Ocean Cable Cooperating, 51 

French and English Measures Compared, 51 

Metric Coinage, _ 53 

Connecticut early Commended it, _. 54 

Cooperation of Teachers, 55 

Metric Standard for the States, 56 

Educational Lessons from the Centennial, 59- 79 

School Architecture, 64 

School Furniture, .. 61 

School Apparatus and Appliances, 68 

Pedagogic Museums, 73 

Geometric Forms, 76 

Study of One's Vernacular, 79-90 

Primary Course, 84 

Intermediate Course, _.._ 86 

Advanced Course, 87 

Normal Schools, _. 91 

Tillage Improvement, 96 

Tree Planting, __ 100 

Neglected Children, 106 

Points of Superiority in American Schools, 107 



In accordance with the recommendation of the Connecticut 
Legislature, the State Board of Education advise that the Metric 
System be taught in all the Schools of the State. To facilitate 
this work, these " Lessons " from my Annual Report have been 
furnished gratuitously to all the teachers of Connecticut. Their 
general publication is an afterthought, prompted by the unex- 
pected favor with which they have been received. As the educa- 
tional needs of other States are substantially the same, the few 
local allusions are retained to show the original aim of the writer 
and the application of kindred facts and principles to other fields. 



Corrigenda. — Since a part of this edition was printed, the leading advocates 
of the Metric System in this country, in order to simplify the nomenclature, have 
agreed to change the spelling of a few terms, using k instead of c in dekameter, 
hektometer and all prefixes of dek and hek, and using ar, hectar and centar 
instead of are, hectare and centare. On page 25, eighth line from bottom, read 
distant in place of friendly. On page 34, read ordnance instead of ordinance. On 
page 44, last line, erase exclusively. On page 53, erase the first six words after 
nickel. 




The Nave 
64 Feet, or 1< 
by Nave and 



6 Meters. 



Hectares. 



o 



> 7 



6 7 



in the year 1876, 
ce of the Libra- 




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8; 9 



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customary use : — 
er in the adjoining 

f the metric sys- 
the corresponding 

3duce centimeters 
, along the central 

9 on these scales, 



(jSTER. 

F I 



tI 



91 10 



ONE METER. 

10 Decimeters. 

100 Centime- 
ters=39.37 in. 

1000 Millimeters. 



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P s? 



THE METRIC SYSTEM. 



The Exposition has given a new illustration of the importance 
of teaching the metric system in American schools. It is gen- 
erally taught in the schools of Europe, and appliances for illus- 
trating the system, such as are ordinarily used in their schools, 
were found in most of the Foreign Educational exhibits. The 
most complete apparatus for illustrating the metric system, and 
the only one which received an "Award," was that shown in 
the Connecticut Educational exhibit, comprising a full set of 
rules and measures, linear, superficial, and cubic, with metric 
scales and weights. Our metric scales were in almost constant 
use, by the thousands weighing themselves by kilograms. 
Nearly all the textile fabrics exhibited at Philadelphia from 
the Continent of Europe, Mexico, and South America, were 
metrically measured, unless, in accommodation to our ignorance, 
the French measures were translated into English. The Euro- 
pean journals, even as quoted in American papers, now use 
metrical terms in linear measurements. American scientific 
periodicals are adopting the same language. Scribner's Monthly, 
the Galaxy, and some other monthlies, now express quantities in 
metric terms as well as in their English equivalents. The 
metric system is already in use in the best laboratories of this 
country. The knowledge of it is now required for admission 
to all our leading Colleges, and ought to be a condition of 
admission to every High School in the country. Aside from 
the question of its early or ultimate adoption in the United 
States, and even were it certain, that it would never become the 
exclusive system here, it ought to be regarded as an essential 
part of a common school education and to hold a place in the 
course of study in every American school. Can one single half 
hour, or if so much time be needed, one half day be better used 
than in learning the metric system ? 
1 



22 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

By the advance of civilization and by the closer relations 
and growing intercourse which commerce and international 
expositions are creating among all nations, the metric system is 
sure to become universal. Our youth should no longer be 
ignorant of this world-language, already in use by the great 
majority of cultivated nations, and which, computing only by 
decimals, is the most simple and uniform. The teaching of this 
system in all our schools has been very generally recommended 
in Educational journals and State Teachers' Associations 
throughout the country. 

METRICAL CHARTS AND MEASURES. 

The metric tables are given in nearly every series of Arithme- 
tics. But when only tables are used, the impression is vague 
and the figures are soon forgotten. The object itself always 
makes a clearer and more lasting impression than any verbal 
description of it. Hence, to facilitate the introduction of the 
metric system into the schools of Connecticut, I have devised a 
variety of metric measures. These are made in large quantities, 
and sold for our schools, at the office of the Board of Education, 
precisely at their cost by the thousand, or about one half the 
retail price of common English rules. 

I have long advocated the early training of the eye in 
measuring objects and distances, and therefore placing linear 
measures in the hands of pupils. As comparison facilitates 
both comprehension and memory, these rules, whether one 
foot, two feet, or more, should be metrically marked on one 
side or edge, and in inches, feet, or yards on the other. Neat 
foot rules thus marked are furnished at fifty dollars per thou- 
sand, or at five cents each. The linear measures are most used 
and most easily taught, and when once learned serve as a basis 
for the entire system. In some schools, already, every pupil is 
supplied with one of these cheap rules, which, though showing 
only decimeters, centimeters and millimeters, serves as an enter- 
ing wedge for all the rest. 

My thanks are due to Messrs. A. & T. W. Stanley, of New 
Britain, for permission to use their admirable Metric Diagram, 
which is inserted here in order that it may go into the hands of 
every teacher and every school of Connecticut. Giving in one 



23 

comparative view, the exact relation of the inch, foot, and yard to 
the millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, and meter, it makes these 
new measures plain and simple even to young pupils. Besides 
this comparative view, it gives all the needful tables, the approxi- 
mate equivalents and rules for the reduction from one system 
to the other. The Centennial Buildings represented are meas- 
ured metrically as well as in feet. The length of the Main 
Building, for example, is 1,880 feet or 573 meters, and Fair- 
mont Park contains 3,000 acres or about 1,214 Hectares, of 
which 450 acres or about 182 Hectares, were appropriated to the 
Exhibition. This diagram, printed on stout bank paper, and 
neatly bound, I am permitted for a brief time to furnish to the 
teachers and schools of Connecticut only, at half price, or fifteen 
cents per copy. 

"HABD NOMENCLATURE." 

The new and hard terminology of the system is strongly con- 
demned by some, as if meter itself — whether long, short, or 
peculiar, thermo-meter, or baro-meter were a strange Greek term. 
Still more are such words as millimeter, centimeter, and deci- 
meter pronounced too difficult for little children. But the 
youngest child that can count our coin is familiar with dime or 1 
dec- and cent and mill, and with this familiar comparison he 
grasps the compound deci-meter, centi-meter, and milli-meter 
and at once understands their decimal relations. The great 
bugbear is the names of the Greek multiples deea-meter, hecto- 
meter, kilo-meter, and myria-meter. Though perhaps new to the 
pupil, these four prefixes are familiar to the scholar in such 
terms as decalogue, decade, decagon, decapod, hecatomb, 
chiliad, chiliagon, chiliarch, chiliasm, chiliast, myriad, myria- 
pod, and the like. On the submultiples, the child cannot 
blunder after a brief explanation, and in the multiples 
only four prefixes are to be learned. Omitting at first the eupho- 
nic vowel or connective, let these four syllables, Dec, Hec, Kil, 
Myr, — Dec, Hec, Kil, Myr, — Dec, Hec, Kil, Myr, be repeated 
rapidly in concert by a whole class or school for five minutes 
and they are learned forever. The connecting vowels and the 
whole compounds may soon be fully mastered. The Greek 
and Latin numerals under ten enter so largely into the compo- 
sition of English words that they ought to be learned by every 
pupil, aside from their use in metric terms. 



24 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

For all weights, we have only to apply the same prefixes to 
gram, a term already familiar as a measure of weight, and also 
in tele-gram and epi-gram. For superficial measurements the 
same prefixes are applied to Are — an abbreviation of the old 
word area. The word stere is familiar in stereotype, stereoscope, 
stereograph, and some thirty other compounds. Tonneau is 
kindred to ton and is about thirty -five pounds less than our 
long ton. The only new word in the whole nomenclature of 
the metric system is liter, and even this word has long been 
used in litrameter. Instead of being "difficult," then, it 
is a model of simplicity. The use of the same prefixes for 
weights and for all measures linear, liquid, superficial, and 
cubic, greatly facilitates both its study and its use. Once 
properly taught with the various measures in hand, it will 
never be forgotten. Contrast with these few, exact and un- 
varying terms, the cumbrous, clumsy, variable, and really diffi- 
cult nomenclature now in use, comprising lines, barleycorns, 
inches, nails, ells, quarts, quarters, quarterns, gallons, pecks, 
bushels, coombs, minims, noggins, kilderkins, firkins, barrels, 
butts, pipes, puncheons, tierces, hogsheads, scruples, carats, 
grains, drachms, pennyweights, hundredweights, and many 
others. 

IF PROPERLY TAUGHT, EASILY LEARNED. 

Mr. Joseph Hall, the Principal of the Hartford High School, 
whose large observation and experience add weight to his 
opinion, writes me as follows : 

" It seems strange to me that any one can fail to see the neces- 
sity of teaching and learning the Metric System, to which we 
are undoubtedly coming in the near future, and which is 
already in use in nearly all the laboratories in the country. / 
hold that any person of ordinary intelligence ought to master the 
subject in twenty minutes, if it is praperly presented." 

Many teachers inform me that they find from thirty minutes 
to two hours ample time for ordinary pupils in our common 
schools to master this subject. Already familiar with the deci- 
mal system, they have only to apply a dozen words to decimal 
measurements. American teachers of wide experience concur 
in the opinion that the exclusion of all the rules, processes, 
and problems connected with compound numbers by the general 



EAKLY ADVOCATED IN AMERICA. 25 

adoption of the Metric System would save at least one year 
in the school life of every pupil. To the children of England 
who must be trained in pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, 
the gain would be far greater. 

EARLY ADVOCATED IN AMERICA. 

The importance of a standard at once invariable and uni- 
versal has long been felt. President Madison said, "The great 
utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the 
easy rule of decimal proportions, is sufficiently obvious." 
Jefferson desired to reduce " every branch to the same decimal 
ratio already established in coins, and thus bring the calcula- 
tion of the principal affairs of life within the arithmetic of 
every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers." 

John Quincy Adams says of the Metric System : " Consid- 
ered merely as a labor-saving machine, it is a new power 
offered to man incomparably greater than that which he has 
acquired by the new agency which he has given to steam. It 
is in design, the greatest invention of human ingenuity since 
that of printing. It is one of those attempts to improve the 
condition of human kind, which, should it be destined ulti- 
mately to fail, would in its failure deserve little less admiration 
than in its success. If man be an improvable being, if that 
universal peace which was the object of a Saviour's mission, 
which is the desire of the philosopher, the longing of the phi- 
lanthropist, the trembling hope of the Christian, is a blessing 
to which the futurity of mortal man has a claim of more than 
mortal promise ; if the Spirit of Evil is, before the final con- 
summation of things, to be cast down from his dominion over 
men and bound in the chains of a thousand years — the foretaste 
here of man's eternal felicity ; then this system of common 
instruments to accomplish all the changes of social and friendly 
commerce will furnish the links of sympathy between the in- 
habitants of the most friendly regions; the meter will surround 
the world in use as well as in multiplied extension ; and one 
language of weights and measures will be spoken from the 
equator to the poles. 

" The ounce, the drachm and the grain are specific names 
indefinitely applied as indefinite parts of an indefinite whole. 



26 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

The English pound Avoirdupois is heavier than the pound 
Troy, but the ounce Avoirdupois lighter than the ounce Troy. 
The weights and measures of the old system present the perpet- 
ual paradox of a whole not equal to all its parts. Even num- 
bers lose the definite character essential to their nature. A 
dozen becomes sixteen, twenty-eight signifies twenty-five, one 
hundred and twelve mean a hundred. The indiscriminate 
application of the same generic term to different specific things 
and the misapplication of one specific term to another specific 
thing, universally pervade all the old systems and are the inex- 
haustible fountains of diversity, confusion and fraud." 

Says F. A. P. Barnard, LL.D., President of Columbia Col- 
lege, "No cause, since the earliest organization of civilized 
society, has contributed more largely to embarrass business 
transactions among men, especially by interfering with the 
facility of commercial exchanges between different countries, 
or between different provinces, cities, or individual citizens of 
the same country, than the endless diversity of instrumental- 
ities employed for the purpose of determining the quantities of 
exchangeable commodities. For the inconvenience and confu- 
sion resulting from this course, but one effectual remedy can 
possibly be suggested ; and that is the general adoption, 
throughout the world, of one common system of weights and 
measures. Such a common system is offered to us in the 
Metric — a system, according to which the weight and dimen- 
sions of every material thing, whether solid, liquid, gaseous ; 
whether on land or on water, whether in the earth or in the 
heavens ; and whether determined by the scale, plummet, bal- 
ance, barometer, or thermometer, are ascertained by a method 
absolutely uniform, entirely simple, and equally suitable to the 
use of all mankind, resting upon a single invariable standard 
of linear measure, with multiples and sub-multiples like those 
of our monetary system, exclusively decimal, with appropriate 
names, similar in all languages, and itself secure against the 
possibility of change or loss through carelessness, or accident or 
design, by being constructed on scientific principles, and copied 
for distribution among the different nations of the world." 

Charles Sumner says : " The rising generation will embrace 
it, and ever afterward number it among the choicest possessions 



LATER PROGRESS. 27 

of an advanced civilization. A system of weights and measures 
born of philosophy rather than of chance, is what we now seek. 
To this end old systems must be abandoned. A chance system 
cannot be universal. Science is universal. Therefore, what is 
produced by science may find a home everywhere. The metric 
terms are equally intelligible in all languages. They are in 
their nature common or cosmopolitan, and in all countries the 
name instantly suggests the measure with exquisite precision." 

LATER PROGRESS. 

The old systems were as various as the nations that used them. 
If the standard had always been the length of the foot of their 
several kings, the variety would hardly have been greater. 
More than one hundred foot measures, each differing from all 
the rest, have been in use in Europe. At the beginning of 
the present century, the foot had not less than sixty values in 
Europe. There is great encouragement in the progress already 
made towards uniformity. At the International Exposition in 
Paris in 1867, where the measures of all the world were compared, 
only eight of this discordant class survived. The last decade has 
witnessed still greater progress in this direction. The Metric 
System is now adopted by the Swiss, Swedes, Spaniards, Ger- 
mans, Austrians, Italians, Portuguese, Dutch, Danes, Belgians, 
Greeks, Mexicans, Brazilians, and by most of the South Ameri- 
can States, and in British India, and in the majority of these 
nations its use is compulsory. Sweden has postponed the date 
of its obligatory use till 1889, in order that the people may 
have time for its voluntary introduction, and thus all actual 
compulsion be avoided. But the intelligent mechanics and 
manufacturers of Sweden are already so rapidly introducing 
the metric measures, that they are likely to be in general use 
there within three or four years. This System was legalized in 
Germany in 1868, and after only four years of preparation its use 
was made compulsory. The Educational Department issued 
pamphlets showing its advantages and explaining the metric 
values. It is due to the influence of the schools of Germany 
that the people were so soon prepared for the appreciation and 
reception of the metric system. 

It is strange that our country, which has cut loose from so 



28 THE METEIC SYSTEM. 

many bondages of mediaeval or modern precedent, should be 
distanced by so long a list of nations, and even by the weaker 
republics of our own continent, in the establishment of the 
Metric System. It is strange that a nation which in 1776 
commenced a career of progressive policy which led soon after- 
wards to the construction and adoption of an admirable decimal 
system of coinage, should not at that time have adopted a 
decimal system of weights and measures, as Jefferson desired ; 
but it is yet more inexplicable that at the great Centennial 
Exposition of 1876, the antiquated system should be found 
still prevailing, in unpleasant contrast with the admirable scale 
by which the French, German, and other European nations 
measured and weighed their goods. Had the advice of Jeffer- 
son been heeded, the Metric System might easily and naturally 
have been introduced here in connection with our decimal 
currency. Had it been generally taught in our schools fifty or 
even twenty years ago, the main objections to its use would no 
longer be heard. If, like Germany, we now prepare the way 
for it through the vast and effective machinery of our schools, 
it will, at no distant day, supplant our present system-less 
system, and leave it shelved in cyclopedias, with the other 
curiosities of the feudal ages, where it belongs. 

PEOGEESS IN ENGLAND. 

At a convention of the friends of the Metric System, held 
in the Lord Mayor's mansion, London, which I attended in 
1871, facts and statements were presented which indicated 
great progress of public sentiment in that country, and cau- 
tious and conservative as the English people are, promised 
its adoption within the next decade. The discussions then 
progressing in Parliament seemed to me to assure the same 
result. Its use was legalized in 1864 so far as relates to con- 
tracts. As early as 1862 the Weights and Measures' Commit- 
tee unanimously recommended that " the use of the Metric Sys- 
tem be rendered legal. No compulsory measures should be 
resorted to until they are sanctioned by the general conviction 
of the public. That the government should sanction the use 
of the Metric System (together with our present one) in levy- 
ing the custom duties, thus familiarizing it among our 



PROGRESS IN ENGLAND. 29 

merchants and manufacturers and giving facilities to foreign 
traders in their dealings with this country. The Metric Sys- 
tem should form one of the subjects in the competitive exam- 
ination of the Civil Service. The gram should be used as a 
weight for foreign letters and books at the Post Office. The 
Metric System should be taught in all schools receiving grants 
of public money. In all government reports and statistics, 
quantities should be expressed in terms of the Metric System, 
in juxtaposition with those of our own." These recommenda- 
tions were partially adopted in 1864. Four years later the 
Standards' Commission, Gr. B. Airy (Astronomer Royal) Chair- 
man, and H. W. Chrisholm (Warden of the Standards), Secre- 
tary, say : " Considering the extent and importance of our 
commercial and scientific intercourse with so many nations 
who have adopted the Metric System, and that it has now 
become a widely extended international system, this country 
can no longer isolate herself from other countries by refusing 
to adopt that common method of computing the quantities 
of all merchandise and other articles passing between them, 
which so many other nations have already accepted. Consid- 
ering the great increase during late years of international 
communication and the general adoption of the Metric System 
in Europe, and other parts of the world, the progress of public 
opinion in this country in its favor, and its increasing use in 
scientific researches, in the practice of accurate chemistry and 
engineering construction, considering the advantage of adopt- 
ing uniform names for an international system of weights and 
measures, the French nomenclature as well as the decimal 
scale of the Metric System should be introduced in this coun- 
try, and mural standards of the Metric System should be 
exhibited in public places. Considering that the Metric System 
includes the relation of coinage to weights and measures, par- 
ticularly in its uniform decimal scale, and that its advantages 
would be much increased by establishing a corresponding inter- 
national system of coinage, in regard to a unit and a decimal 
scale, we are of the opinion that, even if the difficulties of estab- 
lishing an international unit of coinage cannot be at present 
overcome, yet the decimation of our systsm of coinage which is in 
the power of the Government, would be very useful to the public." 



30 THE METEIC SYSTEM, 

This recommendation of the decimation of the English 
system of coinage is the more remarkable when it is remembered 
that Sir Thomas Graham (master of the mint), and H. W. Miller 
(of the Bank of England) were members of this Commission. 
These recommendations met the general approval of the edu- 
cated classes of England. The bill for the compulsory use of 
the Metric System introduced into Parliament in 1871 was 
" supported by forty-three Associated Chambers of Commerce 
and Agriculture, by Farmers' Clubs, Workingmen Associations, 
and many scientific bodies, and by the representatives of the 
largest constituencies of the kingdom, Manchester, Liverpool, 
Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, and many others. Observing 
carefully the tone of the English press and the discussions of 
Parliament on this subject, and conferring with members of 
School Boards and members of Parliament, 1 was convinced 
that the educated classes regard its adoption in England as 
only a question of time. The government did not oppose the 
bill on its merits, but solely on the ground that further time 
was needed to perfect the bill and prepare the people to appre- 
ciate and apply its provisions. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, 
President of the Board of Trade, said in Parliament : " The 
general feeling of this country i's not at present such as would 
justify the compulsory introduction of the Metric System. It 
will be better to postpone its consideration and leave it to the 
government to introduce a complete system next session." 
Notwithstanding this request for postponement with the im- 
plied promise of the ministry to favor the system at a later 
day, the bill was pushed to an immediate decision, and was 
defeated by a majority of only five votes. Their unexpected 
strength at this defeat, if not a virtual victory, gave the friends 
of the measure confidence of success in a future trial, and 
stimulated them to new efforts in educating and preparing the 
people for the reception of the Metric System. It was in this 
view that Sir Charles Eeed, President of the London School 
Board (whom Yale College at her last Commencement honored 
with the degree of LL.D.) expressed special interest in the vari- 
ous appliances for teaching and illustrating the Metric System 
shown in the Connecticut Educational Exhibit. 



GERMAN EXPERIENCE. 31 



GERMAN EXPERIENCE. 



Many who admit the great advantages of the Metric System 
regard the difficulties in the way of its introduction as insuper- 
able. The recent experience of Germany, which fully adopted 
the system in 1872, refutes their objections. In 1871, I found 
the schools of Germany earnestly enlisted in the work of pre- 
paring the people for this transition. The subject was first 
thoroughly taught in their Normal Schools and Teachers' In- 
stitutes. A "schulmeter" and other metric measures and 
weights and a metric chart were in general use in the schools 
which I visited in various part of Germany. The old German 
maxim, "whatever you would have appear in a nation's life, 
that should be put into its schools," was successfully applied to 
the Metric System. With their ample appliances for illustra- 
tion, it was easily mastered in all their schools. The teachers 
said one or two hours were sufficient for ordinary pupils to learn 
the system when the measures and charts were in hand and 
properly explained. The experience of Germany clearly shows 
that it rests with our teachers and schools to prepare the people 
of this country for the adoption of the Metric System. Once 
taught to the children with metric measures in their hands, 
parents will learn it from them, and the whole people soon be 
able to understand, appreciate and use it. 

Though exulting over France, and excessively elated by her 
military triumph, Germany had the sagacity and courage to 
adopt this system from the country she had conquered. As an 
instructive lesson to us, I fully endorse the following remarks of 
Mr. J. P. Putnam, who also made "careful observations, on the 
spot, of the manner in which the new system was received in Ger- 
many at the time of its general introduction to the exclusion of 
all others, especially by the mechanics, manufacturers and build- 
ers and all who make immediate practical use of the weights and 
measures. The new system was first received by the public in 
very different ways. Some were indifferent ; others considered 
it an unnecessary innovation, from which a thousand disad- 
vantages to trade and manufacturers would result; others, and 
by far the greatest number, composed of the most intelligent of 
the people, looked upon the reform as a necessary result of the 
general advance of civilization, from which the greatest bless- 



32 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

ings were to be derived in the end, and zealously applied 
themselves to secure its numerous advantages as early as possi- 
ble. In a very short time, however, as the beauty and sim- 
plicity of the new system began to be generally understood, 
those belonging to the first two classes rapidly diminished in 
number, until finally few grumblers were left. The sturdiest 
antagonist to innovation, prompted at first by a kind of patri- 
otic feeling of allegiance to what was established, handed down 
from their fathers, and inculcated by education, began to yield 
to the general advance of the times, and to see that to reject the 
new system solely on the ground of its novelty was to attempt 
to arrest the progress of civilization itself. The practical diffi- 
culties to making the change were represented as far more for- 
midable than they proved to be in execution, when a simulta- 
neous effort was made throughout the country. Thus it was ob- 
jected that the lumbermen, the hardware, the brick and other 
manufacturers, who worked to feet and inches, would greatly 
suffer. Experience showed, however, that this fear was greatly 
exaggerated. Every man had only his small share of the reform 
to sustain, and each was aided by his neighbor, so that every- 
thing went on with astonishing smoothness and ease, and the 
manufacturers soon began to appreciate the advantages of a 
system which so greatly facilitated all their calculations and 
advanced the interests of commerce both foreign and domestic. 
In some cases the gauges were slightly altered to suit the new 
measures, and in others the old forms were retained, where the 
new metric values could be applied to them without the incon- 
venience of retaining too small fractions. In many cases it 
was found that instead of the expected inconvenience, a great 
convenience was experienced from the change at the outset. 
In the case of the brick manufacturer, for example, great an- 
noyance was anticipated, because the three dimensions were 
expected to measure even inches. The result, however, proved 
to be exactly the reverse to architects and builders, the impor- 
tance of which can scarcely be overestimated. Previous to the 
reform in the different German States, the dimensions of bricks 
varied as much as the different systems of measures themselves. 
The result was an inconvenience, the extent of which only the 
practical architect and builder can realize. Immediately upon 



ORIGIN OF THE SYSTEM. 33 

the introduction of the Metric System, every brick-yard in Ger- 
many was obliged to shape its bricks after a uniform pattern, to 
the immense relief of the consumers. 6 cm. (centimeters) X 12 
cm. X 24 cm. (25 cm. mortar included) is now the universal meas- 
ure of bricks in Germany. The same difficulty overcome by the 
Germans still holds us in bondage. No two brick yards turn 
out the same sized bricks, and accuracy in the estimate of cost 
and artistic effect is impossible, even at the expense of infinite 
labor. Good fortune permitting, we shall be relieved of this 
inconvenience and adopt, it is to be hoped, for the sake of 
uniformity, the same figures for our bricks just adopted by the 
Germans. What difficulties will be encountered at first in our 
home manufactures will be offset by convenience in our 
imports and exports, where we deal with countries using the 
Metric System." 

ORIGIN OF THE SYSTEM. 

" The proposition for the creation of a Metric System origi- 
nated in 1790 with Prince Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun. 
He recommended the length of the pendulum beating seconds 
in latitude 45° as a suitable linear basis, and introduced into 
the National Assembly of France a decree embodying this 
proposition, and providing for a scientific determination of the 
exact length of this pendulum by a commission composed in 
equal numbers of members of the French Academy of Sciences 
and of the Royal Society of London. In subsequent proceed- 
ings, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and 
Sweden participated by sending delegates to an international 
commission. The system itself was, however, matured by the 
labors of a committee of the Academy of Sciences embracing 
five of the ablest mathematicians of Europe, including Laplace. 
Their report, after considering the comparative fitness, as a 
standard of length, of the pendulum and of the earth itself in 
some one of its natural dimensions, decided in favor of the lat- 
ter, and recommended as the standard unit of linear measure, 
one ten-millionth of the quadrant of a terrestrial meridian. 
This report was approved by the Assembly. Committees of 
the Academy were then charged with the duty of making the 
necessary determinations of the standard units, including those 




34 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

of capacity and weight as well as that of length. An arc of 
the meridian passing through Paris, and extending from Dun- 
kirk to Barcelona was measured trigonometrically by Delambre 
and Mechain, an operation of immense labor which occupied 
seven years, the object being to ascertain with the greatest 
exactness the length of the linear base, called the meter. It 
was resolved to make the unit of volume equal to the capacity 
of a cubical vessel measuring one-tenth of a meter on its edges ; 
and the standard of weight, the actual weight of distilled 
water which should fill such a vessel at the temperature of 
maximum density. The weight of a given volume of water 
under these conditions was, therefore, made a subject of elabo- 
rate investigation by a committee of the Academy, and in con- 
formity with the results obtained, the standard unit of weight, 
called the gram, was fixed at one one-thousandth part of the 
standard weight above mentioned, which being one thousand 
grams in weight is called the kilogram. The standard meter, 
a simple bar of platinum, which represents the linear base of 
the system, and the standard kilogram, a simple cylinder, also 
of platinum, which represents the unit of metric weights, are 
deposited in the Palace of the Archives in Paris. 

The question has been somewhat discussed whether the 
prototype meter of the Archives is really, with great severity 
of exactness, one ten-millionth part of the quadrant of a terres- 
trial meridian. This question complicates itself with the 
further question, what is the true figure of the earth ? There 
is no doubt at all of the accuracy of the measurement made by 
the French geodesists ; but they measured only about ten 
degrees of the Paris meridian, and from this measurement 
deduced the length of the entire quadrant of ninety degrees by 
calculation, on the supposition that the earth is a regular sphe- 
roid having an ellipticity of g^gth. The investigations of Gen. 
T. F. De Shubert, of the Eussian army, and of Capt. A. E. 
Clark, of the British Ordinance Survey, have made it probable 
that the earth is an ellipsoid of three unequal axes, rather than 
a spheroid, and that the meridian passing through Paris is a 
trifle longer than the French computers supposed. If this is so 
— a thing which must yet be regarded as doubtful — the proto- 
type meter of the archives is by a very minute portion (hardly 



METRIC TABLES. 35 

more than one two-hundredth of an inch) less than T ^-.J~-- of 
the Paris meridian quadrant. On the other hand, it is, on the 
same supposition, with almost mathematical exactness the 
____>__ 17 _ part of the meridian quadrant passing through New 
York city. 

These discussions and the desirability of settling all doubts 
as to the stability of the system and the permanency of its 
unit bases, as well as of providing authenticated copies of the 
prototype standard to be distributed to the governments of all 
metric nations and of securing such standards against the 
danger of alterations in all coming time, led to the assembling 
at Paris in the year 1870 of an international commission to 
consider and adjust all questions connected with this subject. 
In this commission, thirty independent powers were represented. 
The deliberations of the commissions, interrupted by the war 
of that year between France and Germany, were subsequently 
resumed, and resulted at length in an international convention 
providing for the maintenance at Paris of an International 
Bureau of weights and measures, to be supported by pro rata 
contributions from all the signatory powers, and charged with 
the care of the prototype standards, and with the duty of con- 
structing and verifying copies of those standards, not only for 
the powers interested but for other governments, or even for 
corporations and individuals who should apply for them and 
should be willing to pay the expense attending their construc- 
tion and comparison. This convention was signed in March, 
1874, the diplomatic representative of the United States, Mr. 
Washburne, being by direction of the President, one of the 
signers. It was resolved by this commission that the proto- 
type meter and the prototype kilogram at the Archives shall be 
recognized and perpetuated forever as the true bases of the 
system, without regard to any doubtful questions as to the 
exactness of their correspondence with their theoretic values." 
— F. A. P. Barnard, 

METRIC TABLES. 

For the convenience of teachers and scholars, and to show its 
great simplicity, the whole metric system is here presented on 
a single page. 



36 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

Monet. 

10 mills make a cent. 

10 cents make a dime. 

10 dimes make a dollar. 

10 dollars make an eagle. 

Length. 

10 milli-meters make a centimeter. 

10 centi-meters _ make a decimeter. 

10 deci-meters make a meter. 

10 meters _ make a dekameter. 

10 deka-meters make a hectometer. 

10 hecto-meters make a kilometer. 

10 kilo-meters _ _ .make a myriameter. 

Weights. 

10 milli-grams make a centigram. 

10 centi-grams _ make a decigram. 

10 deci-grams_ make a gram. 

10 grams. make a dekagram. 

10 deka-grams make a hectogram. 

10 hecto-grams make a kilogram. 

10 kilo-grams_ make a myriagram 

Capacity. 

10 milli-liters ._ make a centiliter. 

10 centi-liters make a deciliter. 

10 deci-liters make alitor. 

10 liters __ make a dekaliter. 

10 deka-liters _ .make a hectoliter. 

The Square and Cubic Measures 

are nothing more than the squares and cubes of the measures 
of length. The are and slere are other names for the square 
deka-meter and the cubic meter. 

"In this brief space you behold the whole Metric System of 
Weights and Measures. What a contrast to the anterior con- 
fusion ! A boy at school can master the Metric System in an 
afternoon. Months, if not years, are required to store away the 
perplexities, incongruities and inconsistences of the existing 
weights and measures, and then memory must often fail in 
reproducing them. The mystery of compound arithmetic is 
essential in the calculations which they require. All this is 
done away by the decimal progression, so that the first four 
rules of arithmetic are ample for the pupil." 

Charles Sumner. 



METRIC TABLES. 



37 



The following table gives the metric measures legalized* in 
the United States, with the abbreviations and their equiva- 
lents now in use. 

Measures of Length. 



Metric Denominations. 


Abbrevia- 
tions. 


Values. 


Equivalents legalized by 
Congress in denomina- 
tions now in use. 


Myriameter 


Mm. 
Km. 
Hm. 
Dm. 
m. 

dm. 

cm. 
mm. 


10,000 m. 

1,000 m. 

100 m. 

10 m. 

1 m. 

.1 m. 

.01 m. 

.001m. 


6.2137 miles. 


Kilometer 


0.62137 " 


Hektometer 


or 3280 ft. 10 in. 
328 ft 1 in. 


Dekameter _ 


393 7 " 


Meter 


39.37 " 


Decimeter 


3.937 " 


Centimeter 

Millimeter 


0.3937 " 
0.03937 " 







Measures op Surface. 



Metric Denominations. 


Abbrevia- 
tions. 


Values. 


Equivalents legalized by 
Congress in denomina- 
tions now in use. 


Hectar 

Ar - 

Centar 


Ha. 
a. 
ca. 


10,000 sq. m. 

100 sq. m. 

1 sq. m. 


2.471 acres. 
119.6 sq. yds. 
1550 sq. in. 







* The following Act was passed in 1866: 

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act it shall 
be lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and 
measures of the metric system, and no contract or dealing, or pleading in any 
court, shall be deemed invalid or liable to objection because the weights or 
measures expressed or referred to therein are weights or measures of the metric 
system. 

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, The the tables in the schedule hereto annexed 
shall be recognized in the construction of contracts, and in all legal proceedings, 
as establishing, in terms of the weights and measures now in use in the United 
States, the equivalents of the weights and measures expressed therein in terms of 
the metric system ; and said tables may be lawfully used for computing, determin- 
ing, and expressing in customary weights and measures the weights and measures 
of the metric system. 

2 



38 



THE METRIC SYSTEM. 



Measures of Capacity. 



Metric Names. 

Kiloliter or Stere 

Hektoliter 

Dekaliter 

Liter _ 

Deciliter 

Centiliter 

Milliliter 



Abbrevia- 
i| tions. 


No. of 
Liters. 


Kl. st. 


1000 


HI. 


100 


Dl. 


10 




1 


dl. 


.1 


cl. 


.01 


ml. 


.001 



Dry Measure. 



1.308 cu. yds. 
2 bu. 3.35 pks. 
9.08 qts. 
0.098 qt. 
6.1022 cu. in. 
0.6102 " " 
0.061 " " 



Liquid or Wine 
Measure. 



26417 gals. 
26.411 " 
2.6417 " 
1.0567 qts. 
0.845 gill. 
0.338 fld. oz. 
0.27 fld. dr. 



Weights. 



Metric Denominations and Values. 


Weight of what 

quanity of Water 

at maxium. 


Equivalent in de- 


Karnes. 


Abbrevia- 
tions. 


No. of Grams. 


use. 
Avoirdupois weight. 


Millier or Tonneau.. 
Quintal . 


M. or T. 

Q. 

Mg. 
Kg. 
Hg. 
Dg. 

g- 

dg. 
eg. 
mg. 


1,000,000 
100,000 
10,000 
1,000 
100 
10 
1 
.1 
.01 
.001 


1 cu. meter. 

1 hectoliter. 
10 liters. 

1 liter. 

1 deciliter. 
10 cu. centim. 

1 " " 

.1 " " 

10 cu. millim. 

1 " " 


2204.6 lbs. 
220.46 " 


Myriagram . 

Kilogram or Kilo 

Hektogram . 

Dekagram . 


22.046 " 
2.2046 " 
3.5274 oz. 
0.3527 " 


Gram .... 


15.432 grs. 
1.5432 " 
1543 " 


Decigram . 


Centigram ,-. . 


Milligram . _ 


0154 " 







The following illustration of the advantages of the decimal 
system on pages 39-41, is given by Mr. J. P.* Putnam ; 

ADVANTAGES OF DECIMAL DENOMINATIONS. 

Our Federal currency shows us the advantages of the deci- 
mal system, in the facility and rapidity with which we make 
reductions and calculate values. We should consider our 



METRIC TABLES. 39 

burden intolerable if, instead of this simple table, we were 
obliged to rise three or four complicated ones, all different 
from each other, like our three different tables for measuring 
weight ; one, for instance, like the English pounds, shillings 
and pence, for buying medicine ; another, different from the 
first, for buying ojir groceries; and a third, different from 
either, and perhaps containing vulgar fractions for greater 
variety, for buying our jewelry and other ornaments. 

Our engineers feel so deeply the importance of the decimal 
subdivision, that, notwithstanding the inconvenience of com- 
pleting our system, they have adopted the decimal subdi- 
vision of the above. 

There are other advantages under this head, especially 
important to architects, engineers, mechanics, and contractors. 
Such as the greater convenience in measuring off the full size 
from small drawings which vary now between the inconvenient 
quantities of ^ in., ^ in., r \ in., J in., £ in., f in., 1 in., 1| 
in., 8 in., etc., to the foot; so that in measuring off the full 
size a considerable diversity of multiples must be used. With 
the decimal system nothing would be easier than the reading 
off of the full size from the scale drawings, 1.50 representing 
either the full size of 1 m. 50 c. or 1 decim. 50 mm., or 1 c. 5 
mm., according to the, scale of the drawing expressed upon it, 
the mere alteration of the position of the decimal point giving 
the desired full size on the scale dimensions. 

Then the decimal subdivision leaves less chance of error 
from the misreading of figures. Every architect has, for 
example, experienced the liability to mistake in reading V 5" 
as 15" instead of 17". 



Problems to show the relative facilities of reduction by the old and new 

EXAMPLE, METRIC SYSTEM. 

Problem,— Beduce 1543514 centimeters to kilometers, etc. 



OPERATION". 

15,435,14 cm. = 15 kilometers, 435 meters, and 14 centimeters. Ans. 



40 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 



Problem. — Reduce 1543514 inches to miles, furlongs, etc. 

OPERATION BY OLD SYSTEM. 

12) 1543514 m. 

3) 128626 ft. + 2 in. 

5i= X 2 L ) 42875 yds. + l ft. 
2 



U) 85? 50 halves of yd. 

40) 7795 r. +f yds. -2 yds., 1 ft, 6 in. 

8) 194 1 + 35 r. 

24 m. + 2 f . 
24 m., 2 1, 35 r., 2 yds., 1 ft., 2 in. 
1 ft., 6 in . 

27 m., 2 i, 35 r., 2 yds., 2 ft., 8 in. Am. 
ALL MEASURES COMMENSURABLE. 

This is an enormous advantage, for if the weight of a body 
is given we can know easily its volume and reciprocally. In 
our present system there exists no such relation between the 
weights and measures. As a result of this relationship in the 
Metric System, the unit of weight is easily obtained and 
becomes as unalterable as the unit of length, the gram or unit 
of weight being the weight of a cubic centimeter of distilled 
water at 4° Centigrade. A cubic meter of water weighs a ton 
or 1,000 kilogs. In ship-building it is a special advantage to 
have a unit which bears an exact proportion to a ton of water ; 
a ton contains 35.955 cubic feet, and the only way to get rid of 
the long decimal fraction is to add salt to the water until thirty- 
Jive cubic feet weigh exactly a ton, an operation sufficiently diffi- 
cult to perform successfully when the ocean is the object to be 
operated upon. 

Problems to show the relative facilities of calculation by the old and new systems. 

Problem. — What is the weight of 257 cubic meters, and 217 cubic decimeters, of 
cannel coal? Given, specific gravity of cannel coal 1.27. 

OPEEATION BY METRIC SYSTEM. 

257.217 cu. m. = 257,2l7,000 cu. cm. 

1 cu. cm. of water weighs I gr. 

1 cu. cm. of cannel coal weighs 1 gr. x 1.27 = 1.27 grams. 

257,217,000 
1.27 



1800519000 
514434 

257217 



Ans. 326,665,590.00 grams, or 
326 Metric tons, 665 kgs., and 590 grams. 



METK1C TABLES. 



41 



EXAMPLE, OLD SYSTEM. 

(257.217 cu. meters =2 cu. rods, 3 cu. yds., 18 cu. ft, 40 cu. in.) 
Problem. — What is the weight of 2 cubic rods, 3 cubic yards, 1 8 cubic feet, and 
40 cubic inches of cannel coal? Given, specific gravity of cannel coal 1.27, and 
supposed weight of 1 cubic inch of water about 252.7453 + grains. 
By the old system it is impossible to solve the problem accurately. 

OPERATION. 

2 cu. rods, 3 cu. yds., 18 cu. ft., 40 cu. inches. 
2 
166| 



2 cu. rods =3 3 2f cu. yds. 
3 

335| 

27 



2345 

670 
20J 



335| cu. yds. = 9065i cu. ft. 
18 



9083J 
1728 

72664 
18166 
63581 
9083 
432 

9083icu.ft. = 15695856 cu. in. 
40 



5i=V x Jf x J^ = J^i = i66|. 

The U. S. Bureau of Weights and 
Measures have accepted (though it is 
incorrect) the weight of 1 cu. inch of 
water 

= 252.7453 grs. 
1.27 



17692171 
5054906 
2527453 



320.986531=:grs. weight of 
1 cu. in. cannel coal. 



15695896 cu. in.=2 cu. rods, 3 cu. yds, 3 8 cu. ft, 40 cu. in, 

320.986 

7000 grs. Troy=l lb. Avoirdupois 



94175376 
125567168 
141263064 
31391792 
47087688 



VOO0) 5038162873.457 grs. 



25) 719737 lbs., 3873.457 grs. 



4) 28789 qrs., 12 lbs. 
20) 7197 cwt, 1 qr. 
359 T., 17 cwt. 



3873.457 grs. Troy^ 3873 - 45 * 7 lbs. Avoir- 
7000 



dupois. 




3873.457 1C 
x 16- 
7000 


7746.914 

oz. 

875 


875) 7746.914 


(8.853 +oz. 


7000 


16 


7469 


5118 


7000 


853 


4691 


13. 648 + drams. 


4375 





3164 



Am. 359 T. } 17 cwt., 1 qr., 12 lbs., 8 oz., 13.648 drs. 



42 THE METEIC SYSTEM. 






In the second operation 380 figures are required, in the first 
only 87. In the second, fifteen different mathematical operations 
have to be performed, in the first only two. This is but a fair 
comparison of the two systems. 

A LABOR SAVING MACHINE. 

The problems given on the last three pages show in striking 
contrast the facilities of the old and new methods. Some 
years ago circulars were sent to the leading teachers of 
England, by the International Decimal Association, asking 
their opinion of the valu£ of the Metric System considered 
merely as a labor saving machine. The report of this 
Commission of teachers was given at the Metric Convention 
in London previously mentioned. The general opinion 
was that the full adoption of this system and the exclusion 
of their cumbrous coinage would save £350,000 ($1,750,000) 
in annual school expenses and two years of the school life of 
every child in the English schools. Familiar, as American 
youth are with our decimal currency, they would thus gain 
not more than half this time. Professor Leone Levi, of 
London, Secretary of the Metric Department of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science, in illustration of 
the economic bearings of the subject, says, that the adoption of 
the Metric System would save the London & Northwestern 
Railway ten thousand pounds, or fifty thousand dollars, and the 
National Government five hundred thousand pounds, or two 
and a half millions of dollars, in addition to the school gain 
above mentioned. Competent authorities in this country, 
affirm that "millions of dollars would be saved annually in 
dealing with the nations using this system, besides the greater 
saving to ourselves in the daily business of the country." 

The use of the Metric System in the computation of customs- 
duties would greatly facilitate commercial interchange and 
relieve an army of clerks in the custom-houses of the 
United States, who are now employed in reducing the 
weights and measures of one country to those of another. As 
the larger portion of our imports are both purchased and 
invoiced metrically, this change would secure greater prompt- 
ness and accuracy and prevent endless confusion and trouble, 



METKIC POSTAGE. 43 

and stop the source of fraud and imposition arising from the 
reduction of diverse and complex systems. 

Formerly the tendency has been to the isolation of races and 
the antagonism of nations. But commerce is now confederat- 
ing peoples the most distant and diverse. Midway between the 
leading empires of Europe and Asia, this country is already 
the commercial center of the nations, and is to be still more 
the great highway of trade for the world. The exigences of 
business and commerce, therefore, will ere long demand the 
general adoption of this world language now common to nearly 
all civilized countries and sure to open new channels of com- 
munication among the nations. Such a consummation will be 
an achievement worthy to mark the advanced civilization of 
this century. 

METRIC POSTAGE. 

A knowledge of the Metric System is a matter of pecuniary 
interest to all who are doing large business through the mails. 
The fact ought to be everywhere known that the United States 
Government has adopted a metric basis of postage. Certainly 
the law now discriminates in favor of the Metric System and 
requires postmasters to take fifteen grams as the equivalent of 
one-half ounce. The following is the provision of the Kevised 
Statutes of the United States (chapter 3, section 3880): "The 
Postmaster-General shall furnish to the post offices exchanging 
mails with foreign countries, and to such other offices as he 
may deem expedient, postal balances denominated in grams of 
the Metric System, fifteen grams of which shall be the equiva- 
lent for postal purposes, of one-half ounce avoirdupois, and so 
on in progression" The last provision, "and so on in progres- 
sion," is meant to include all multiples of the fifteen grams, or 
all higher weights of letter postage. As fifteen grams are fifty- 
three one-hundredths of an ounce, there may be a saving of 
six per cent, by all who use the metric letter scales. When 
this law is generally understood every business house and 
every person having extensive correspondence " will insist 
that his own post-office take advantage of its provisions, thus 
reducing his postage six per cent. This difference in weight is 
often enough to save an extra stamp, and each year's saving on 
a large mail would be an item worthy of the attention of any 



4A THE METKIC SYSTEM. 

business man." The Post Office Department has already fur- 
nished metric balances to Hartford, New Haven, New York, 
Boston, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleve- 
land, Buffalo, Annapolis, Waltham, Corpus Christi, Petersburg, 
St. Louis, San Francisco, Pottsville, Georgetown, etc., and has 
a large number on hand awaiting requests from offices desiring 
them. 

The International Postal Union, ratified by treaty at Berne, 
in October, 1874, includes twenty-one nations, and expresses its 
rates entirely in the Metric System. In this Union the United 
States is one of the contracting parties. 

SCIENTIFIC MEN USE IT. 

Scientific investigators and writers almost unanimously favor 
and use the Metric System. One of the objects of the Amer- 
ican Metrological Society, as given in its constitution, illustrates 
the broad application of this system. " A further object will 
be to secure the universal adoption of common units of measure 
for the expression of quantities which require to be stated in 
presenting the results of physical observation or investigation, 
and for which the ordinary systems of metrology do not pro- 
vide ; such as the divisions of the barometer, thermometer and 
densimeter; the amount of work done by machines; the 
amount of mechanical energy, active or potential, of bodies, 
as dependent on their motion or position ; the quantities of 
heat present in bodies at given temperatures, or generated by 
combustion or otherwise; the quantity and intensity of electro- 
dynamic currents : the aggregate and the efficient power of 
prime movers ; the accelerative force of gravity ; the pressure 
of steam and of the atmosphere; and other, matters analogous 
to these. The Association will endeavor also to secure uni- 
formity of usage in regard to standard points of reference, or to 
those physical conditions to which observations must be reduced 
for purposes of comparison ; especially the temperature and 
pressure to which are referred the specific gravities of bodies, 
and the zero of longitude on the earth." 

The Metric System has been adopted by the International 
Statistical Congress and by the International Social Science 
Association. It is exclusively used in the United States Mint 



SCIENTIFIC MEN USE IT. 45 

and in the United States Coast Survey. Seventy square miles 
around New Haven, for example, have been carefully surveyed 
during the la l st five years under the direction of the Coast 
Survey. The results of these triangulations are metrically 
expressed. 

"The Metric Memorial" lately presented to Congress has 
over eleven hundred signatures from twenty different States, 
and these names are among the most prominent and influential 
of those States, embracing the faculties of colleges, professional 
schools, and the leading educators of the country. In this list 
were included engineers, architects and leading manufacturers, 
men whose daily occupations show the importance of exact 
measurements, also eminent bankers, merchants and capitalists. 
" The signatures of a single city, belonging to the latter class, 
represent an aggregate of more than a hundred millions of 
dollars. It will thus be seen that among the signers of the 
memorial are represented largely both the intelligence and 
wealth of the country." 

The Boston Society of Civil Engineers recommends " that 
upon every plan that has its scale shown by a graduated line 
indicating feet, miles, etc., a second line should be drawn as a 
scale of meters. This requires very little additional labor, does 
not injure the plan for present use and may enhance its future 
value, shows what is now the lawful standard of the United 
States and how long the meter is compared with the foot, and 
it gives the draughtsman his first lesson as to the difficulties 
that lie in the way of the Metric System. This practice can 
perfectly well be adopted by a very few persons, or even by a 
single individual unsupported by the rest of the community." 
Many of our leading architects, builders, and civil engineers 
now use Metric Measures in their estimates, plans, and surveys. 
At the Centennial Exhibition were shown large drawings of 
the Hoosac Tunnel in feet and meters, Salisbury car-wheels, 
metrically guaged for South American and East Indian rail- 
ways, the standards of the United States Coast Survey and their 
elaborate metric surveys and maps and various metric charts 
and diagrams. The terms of the Metric System are employed in 
class-room instruction in several colleges and nearly all labora- 
tories, in instruction in civil engineering and in field practice. 



4b* THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

Hon. Yung Wing, with his usual foresight and appreciation 
of the future needs and demands of China, has placed our 
Metric diagrams, charts, and rules in the hands of all the Chi- 
nese students in this country. Therefore on their return to 
their native land they will be prepared to teach and use the 
Metric System. 

An association of scientific gentlemen, college professors, 
and prominent teachers, called the " Metric Bureau," has been 
formed in Boston. This is not a money-making concern. On 
the other hand, one of the privileges of membership is that of 
paying an annual assessment of five dollars. Any one may 
become an honorary member by the payment of twenty-five 
dollars, or a life member by the payment of fifty dollars. One 
of the by-laws is, that " no officer shall receive from its funds 
any compensation for his official services." One of the members 
has sent, at his own expense, 8,000 printed tables of the Metric 
System — one to each periodical in the country. The fact that 
Kev F. A. P. Barnard, LL.D., is President of the Association, 
and that among its officers are such men as Hon. Charles Fran- 
cis Adams, Professor H. P. Bowditch, and Nathan Appleton, 
indicates the disinterested and public-spirited aim of the Asso- 
ciation. The constitution says : 

"The object of this Bureau shall be to disseminate information 
concerning the Metric System; to urge its early adoption; and 
to bring about actual introductions wherever practicable. To 
this end, it will secure the delivery of addresses ; publish articles, 
circulate books, pamphlets, and charts ; distribute scales and 
measures ; introduce the practical teaching of the system in 
schools ; and in all proper ways, as far as the means at its 
disposal will allow, the Bureau will urge the matter upon the 
attention of the American people, till they shall join the rest of 
the world in the exclusive use of the International Decimal 

Weights and Measures." 

• 

METRICS AND MANUFACTURING. 

The most serious objection urged against the adoption of the 
Metric System is, that it would necessitate the changing of "all 
drawings, patterns, taps, dies, reamers, mandrels, scale-beams, 
tools, &c." But this change should not be immediate or vio- 
lent. The new should gradually supplant the old. As the 



METKICS AND MANUFACTURING. 47 

present tools and implements are worn out, those made on a 
better scale might take their place. This is the plan already 
adopted in many manufacturing establishments. The Wal- 
tham Watch' Factory, for example, now adopts the Metric 
System for all new tools and new machines, and their watches 
are now made in metric dimensions. Their grand exhibit of 
watches at Philadelphia has already created a demand in other 
lands, while the fact that in all their depositories are kept 
metric duplicates or multiplicates of every wheel and pivot of 
their watches, ready at trifling cost to take the place of any 
broken or disabled part, adds much to their market value 
abroad. The extent of this change is shown by the fact that 
this company now employs nine hundred hands and makes 
about three hundred watches a day. Soon no other measures 
will be used in their factories and machine shops, and their 
computations, drawings, and tools will be only Metric. 

Though, the new system is not to be enforced in Sweden for 
a full decade, many Swedish manufacturers, as a matter of 
business interest and profit, long since adopted Metric Measures. 
Nearly four years ago, the celebrated Motala Iron Works in 
Sweden adopted the Metric System exclusively for all loco- 
motive work. One factory in New Jersey is using the Metric 
System exclusively. 

The Centennial Exposition has created a new necessity for 
learning this system on the part of many Connecticut manufac- 
turers. As a result of their exhibit of carriage wheels, the 
New Haven Wheel Company are now receiving foreign orders 
which come to them expressed in metric terms. The chilled 
car wheels made from Salisbury iron attracted the attention of 
railway men from abroad, and Barnum & Eichardson are now 
shipping car wheels to other countries in answer to orders 
also expressed in metric language. When calling recently 
at the factory of P. Jewell & Sons, in search of metric facts, 
one of the firm showed me an order from Hamburg, Ger- 
many, just opened, which called for belts of twenty-seven 
different dimensions, all metrically expressed. In order to 
meet the European demand for their goods, they have issued a 
circular in the German language, expressing in metric terms 
the width and price of leather belts of fifty-seven dimensions, 



48 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

ranging in width from twenty-five to nine hundred milli- 
meters. The Meriden Britannia Company, who made a grand 
exhibit at Philadelphia, are filling orders for many metric 
countries. Some of our improved breech-loading rifles and 
cartridges are made metrically and thus adapted to the foreign 
market. 

The Pratt & Whitney Company, machinists of Hartford, are 
now sending their machines abroad, and thus learn the prac- 
tical bearings of this subject. The Secretary of this company 
says : " We recognize the desirableness of uniformity of weights 
and measures throughout the world, and are in favor of 
adopting the Metric System ; but think others would suffer 
pecuniarily, with ourselves, if the changes were to be made 
suddenly. If manufacturers would begin at once to make new 
tools and apparatus in conformity with the Metric System, using 
the old until worn out, a change could be brought about with 
little loss, and not much more trouble than is now experienced 
from variations in measures." The makers of fashion plates 
and patterns use metric terms, and the multitude who would 
study the latest Parisian styles find in the centimeter the key 
to their interpretation. In this case even fashion cooperates 
with science and industrial interests in accelerating the needed 
reform. 

European paper-makers are now putting up paper in pack- 
ages of twenty-five, one hundred, and one thousand sheets, 
instead of our twenty-four sheets a quire and twenty quires a 
ream. Some American paper manufacturers have already 
adopted the same plan, so as to correspond with the usage in 
packing envelopes by twenty-fives, hundreds, or thousands. 
Orders to printers coming usually by the hundred or thousand 
can be more easily filled when their paper is purchased in 
packages of one thousand rather than nine hundred and sixty 
sheets. Their estimate of cost is thus facilitated, and odd 
remnants of peculiar kinds of paper for special orders are 
avoided. Some manufacturers put up their goods in packages 
of tens, hundreds, and thousands, instead of by the dozen or 
gross, and mark their prices by the dek or ten, hundred, or 
thousand. All the Metric Measures purchased for our schools 
by the State Board of Education are so packed. 



METEICS AND MANUFACTUKriSrG. 49 

The great Fairbanks' Scale Company have an unprecedented 
demand for Metric Scales and Weights for this country, Mex- 
ico, South America, Japan, and various countries of Europe. 
The Japanese government uses Fairbanks' Metric scales exclu- 
sively in its postal service. The United States Post Office 
Department has ordered a large supply. Extensive foreign 
orders have been received for scales adjusted to two standards, 
as Dutch and French, Spanish and French, German and French, 
and English and French. This firm has sent over thirty thous- 
and metric scales abroad, and the foreign demand is rapidly 
increasing. They are already richly rewarded for the magnifi- 
cent display made Vy them at Philadelphia. I am indebted 
to their kindness for the various Metric Scales shown in the 
Connecticut Educational Exhibit. No other, manufacturing 
establishment in America has done so much to facilitate the in- 
troduction and use of the metric system as this celebrated firm. 
Their double weight-beam scales are the best possible teachers 
of metric weights, and form a most useful part of school appa- 
ratus. Like our Franco-English rules, they make the com- 
parison of the two standards so simple, that weights may be 
converted from one standard to the other with the utmost ease 
and accuracy. The possible influence of such scales in educat- 
ing the popular mind may be inferred from the well founded 
estimate that "the total amount in the way of exchange of 
values in the United States alone is over $3,000,000,000 annu- 
ally, and in this vast interchange of commodities the process of 
weighing is repeated thousands upon thousands of times." 

Our country needs more than all other nations, a world- 
language of weighing and mensuration, because we gather 
together in common citizenship so large a proportion of 
foreigners. And while there would be a slight temporary 
friction in our factories and warehouses in passing from our 
present system to the metric, the change would obviate the 
constant friction, and loss of weeks of efficient service, to our 
manufacturers, in training to the complexities of our system 
those skilled mechanics whom we welcome from metric 
countries. 

General Hawley, in his able lecture on our late Exhibition, 
calls the attention of New England manufacturers to the unmis- 



50 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

takable signs that our factories are before long to meet with, 
serious competition in their great western traffic; for all over 
the West, competing enterprises are entering the field, with 
the advantage of nearness to the western markets. 

But, in compensation, a vast market for our goods, fostered 
by our late exhibits, is rapidly developing in Europe, more 
cheaply accessible by water than is the West by land. New 
England is destined to be a great manufacturing center for the 
older nations across the ocean that bathes our shores and invites 
our ships. To secure this market, hardly any step of equal 
availability, is more necessary than that we should adopt the 
Metric System in gauges and all other constructions and trans- 
actions, to make these intelligible and serviceable in Europe. 
To fail to make this change, with its far-reaching consequences, 
on account of the slight temporary inconvenience involved, 
would be a deplorable blander, if the future of the Eastern 
States is thus correctly foreshadowed. 

IMMIGRATION HELPFUL. 

Immigration from metric countries will greatly facilitate the 
adoption of this system. The French, Swiss, Italians, Belgians 
and some other nationalities now here, thoroughly understand 
it. Hereafter the Austrians, Germans, Swedes and Russians 
coming hither will bring the metric usages and preferences of 
the fatherland ; for I learn through the Russian Consul at New 
York, that Russia, the only empire on the continent not metric, 
is actively preparing to adopt the Metric System. The commis- 
sion appointed two years since by the Russian government to 
investigate the working of the Metric System, both in France 
where it has been longest in use, and in Germany where the 
change is most recent, and to inquire into the difficulties and 
disadvantages experienced by the sudden transition in Ger- 
many, has returned to St. Petersburg. They unanimously 
recommend the adoption of the Metric System as soon as the 
schools and the press can prepare the people for its use, and 
their report is favorably received by the government. In this 
respect, as long since in others, the Consul is confident that 
Russia will soon stand among the most progressive nations of 
Europe. Prejudice and aversion to changing the habits and 



FEENCH AND ENGLISH MEASUEES COMPAEED. 51 

usages of a life- time are the most formidable obstacles to the 
adoption of this new system with native Americans, but this 
large portion of the foreign element in our country have no 
sympathy with such conservatism. In this view it is the more 
necessary that the youth in our schools, while their minds are 
yet ''tabulae rasse" should learn the Metric System. Then by 
the time they form the more numerous element in our citizen- 
ship, the change to the new system will be at once an accom- 
plished fact. 

THE OCEAN CABLES COoPEEATING. 

A few months since, our morning papers said : " Yesterday 
the Sultan of Turkey committed suicide with a pair of scissors 
ten centimeters long." If the terms used had been sagenes, 
ardenes, or vershocks, only Turks or Eussians scattered in 
Europe and America would have understood the dimensions. 
But the operator in Constantinople wisely used that only world 
language known to intelligent readers in every civilized country. 
The telegraph enforces brevity and intelligibility. The metric 
terms are not only the same in all languages, but they are the 
most condensed, comprehensive and exact terms for the expres- 
sion of all dimensions. The cable is so fraternizing the world 
and bringing the most distant nations into such near neighbor- 
hood, as to require for all measurements a common language in 
which dispatches from China, Japan, Turkey, Egypt or Kussia 
will be everywhere intelligible. 

FEENCH AND ENGLISH MEASUEES COMPAEED. 

In the rules and charts furnished to our schools, I have com- 
bined the English and French measures for the purpose of 
comparison. In this way their metric values are most easily 
understood and remembered. There are a few who urge that 
only the metric rules and measures should be used and the 
Metric System taught in our schools to the entire exclusion of 
the English Measures. But little do they know of public 
sentiment, who dream that the new system is so easily and 
rapidly to supplant the old. There must be a long period of 
preparation before the new system can be legally enforced as the 
exclusive one. This comparison of the two systems will aid 
in the desired transition, which must be gradual. Thousands of 



52 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

rules have been furnished the schools of Connecticut, where 
hardly as many scores would have been called for, had they 
been purely French. Many buy them because they are cheaper 
than any English rules in the market, and have the metric 
marks "to boot" If our country were in the condition of 
Germany in 1871, if the old system were condemned and in a 
few months to be rejected as illegal for all contracts, I should 
recommend the use of metric measures only. But in this coun- 
try public sentiment is well nigh supreme. It creates law and 
repeals it. A law in violation of public sentiment is a dead let- 
ter, and therefore demoralizing, for laws habitually violated tend 
to lawlessness. Laws in favor of the Metric System, however 
just and adapted to promote the greatest good of the greatest 
number, will fail utterly if not sustained by popular sympathy 
and support. In the monarchies of the old world, an imperial 
decree may settle the matter, but here, the question of the 
general adoption of the Metric System depends on the previous 
education of public sentiment, and that depends on the teachers 
and press of America. When that work of preparation is 
done, and when the immense advantages of the new system in 
the progress of the arts and in the applications of science, in 
smoothing the road to learning for the young and removing 
those hindrances to human progress,— arbitrary and cumbrous 
systems, rules and processes, — Congress will be only carrying 
out the popular will by fixing the date for the compulsory use 
of the Metric System. 

The opponents of combined measures object that they " cor- 
respond to an interlinear translation from one language to 
another, and in the same way that a person learns a new lan- 
guage quickest by being placed where nothing else is spoken ; 
if the measures have only metric graduations, he is forced to 
use those denominations." But what can be said of those who 
can never be placed in a foreign land " where nothing else is 
spoken," or of those with whom an interlinear translation was 
the only possible method of leading one to begin the study of a 
new language. This supposition exactly suits the case of 
thousands of our youth who would never see or study any 
metric measures unless they were the combined French and 
English. By these three threes (three feet, three inches and 



METEIC COINAGE. 53 

three- eighths of an inch), they will easily and forever fix the 
meter in mind. Our metric yards (English on one side and 
French on the other, with a flexible joint adding the three 
inches and three-eighths of an inch) are already widely used in 
families as well as schools, being equally convenient as a yard 
or meter measure. 

METEIC COINAGE. 

Metric weights are used in our new subsidiary silver coinage. 
The twenty-cent piece weighs five grams, and the new ten-cent 
piece two and a half grams. The five-cent nickel is two centi- 
meters in diameter and weighs five grams. " The coinage of 
the United States in both the metals, gold and silver, is at 
this time, in weight, almost in strict accordance with the Metric 
System. By the coinage act of 1878 the silver coinage is, by 
the explicit terms of the law, made entirely so. The legal 
weights of the gold coins are metric within so small a fraction, 
that for the smaller coins the tolerance remedy allowed by law 
for error of weight, in the mechanical process of coinage, more 
than covers the difference. The weight of standard gold in the 
dollar is twenty-five grains and eight tenths of a grain ; and 
that of pure gold twenty-three grains and twenty -two one hun- 
dredths of a grain ; an excess having the value of about three- 
tenths of a cent; while the legal tolerance on the gold dollar is 
one quarter of a grain of standard gold, of the value of one 
cent. The gold coins of the United States when in circulation 
lose in weight, shortly, by abrasion, more than sufficient to 
bring them to the metric standard. There seems, therefore, to 
be no valid objection to such a modification of the law which 
declares what shall be the weight of the gold coins of the 
United States, as to make the amount of pure gold contained 
in the dollar exactly one gram and a half ; the weight of the 
other gold coins being modified accordingly. Should this 
change be made, all the coins of the United States, except the 
base metal tokens, will be made conformable to the same 
system of weights, and will be consistent with each other." — 
Memorial to Congress of the American Meirological Society. 

It is one of many indications of the progressive spirit of the 
Japanese Empire that the new gold and silver coinage of that 
country is entirely metric. In 1870, Commissioner Ito, master 
3 



54 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

of the mint in Japan, was deputed to visit this country and 
Europe to investigate the subject of currency and coinage. 
After a thorough examination of the usages and prominent 
authorities on this subject in occidental countries, he recom- 
mended, in opposition to the traditions of the East, the dis- 
carding of the silver standard, and the adoption of the standard 
of gold only ; and as the unit-base of the new system, of a 
gold coin of the weight of one gram and two thirds, of the fine- 
ness of nine tenths. An Imperial Decree was accordingly 
issued, providing for the stamping of gold coins of the several 
values, one yen, two yens, five yens, ten yens, and twenty yens, 
— the yen being the Japanese name of the unit-base or gold 
dollar. This gold coinage is now the only legal tender in the 
Empire, except for small payments, which may be made in frac- 
tional paper or silver currency ; and except the silver one yen, 
equivalent to the Spanish dollar, used mainly in the open'ports. 
President Barnard well says, " This remarkable action, which 
illustrates in a striking manner the energy, independence, and 
freedom from prejudice with which the sagacious rulers of 
Japan are seeking to improve the social, political, and material 
condition of their people, is possibly destined to have a large 
influence on the ultimate settlement of the question of an inter- 
national coinage. Should the example of Japan be followed 
by the more populous Empire of China, the demand of 
Oriental commerce may be for gold dollars instead of silver, 
and this demand may decide the question what precise weight 
can be most advantageously given to the gold coins of Europe 
and America. 1 ' 

CONNECTICUT EARLY COMMENDED IT. 

Connecticut is believed to be the first State in the Union 
that formally recommended the teaching of the Metric System 
in all the public schools. In the General Assembly of 1864, the 
following resolution, introduced in the Senate by the Hon. 
Wm. C. Fowler, was duly referred to the Joint Standing Com- 
mittee on Education, afterward reported adversely by them ; 
again discussed in the Senate and recommitted to the same 
committee, who after a full hearing recommended its adoption. 
After considerable discussion, the resolution was finally passed 
without opposition in either House. 



COOPERATION OF TEACHERS. 55 

Whereas, nearly half the population of the Christian world use 
in part or exclusively the Metrical System of Weights and Meas- 
ures ; and whereas, it is in exclusive use in some departments of 
science and in constantly increasing use in others ; and whereas, 
the recent International Congress at Berlin, at which thirty-three 
nations of Europe and America were represented, have recom- 
mended that this system be taught in all public schools ; and 
whereas, it is highly probable that the system will be adopted 
throughout the United States during the present generation : 

■ Resolved by this Assembly, That the Superintendent of Common 
Schools and the various Boards of Education and of School 
Visitors in the several towns and School Districts of the State, be 
urgently recommended to provide that the Metrical System of 
Weights and Measures, together with its relations to the legal- 
ized systems, be taught in all the schools which are under their 
charge.* 

COOPERATION OF TEACHERS. 

The cooperation of teachers is earnestly solicited in preparing 
the public mind for the general appreciation and use of metric 
measures through our schools. It is largely for their sake 
that I have here presented a brief history of the Metric System, 
its origin and progress, the defects of the old system and the 
advantages of the new ; its great simplicity, its brief and exact 
nomenclature, there being only eleven words to be learned and 
but one of those a new term. 

A pamphlet containing this discussion of the Metric System 
and the Stanleys' excellent Meter-Diagram will be furnished 
gratuitously to every teacher of Connecticut. The five cent 
Franco-English foot rule and the Meter-Diagram ought to be 
in the hands of every scholar. Owing to the extra cost of 
the metric graduation, these rules being marked in both centi- 
meters and millimeters, fifty dollars per thousand is as yet the 
lowest figure at which I have been able to procure them by the 
thousand. If they can hereafter be manufactured at a lower 
rate, the schools and teachers shall have the benefit of the 
reduction. They will be furnished at the office of the State 
Board of Education in New Haven, singly, by tens, hundreds 
or thousands, precisely at the cost per thousand. When sent 
by mail, one cent for each rule will pay the extra charge for 
postage. Whatever is procured for schools through the State 
Board of Education, whether Webster's Dictionary (at eight 

* See Senate Journal for 1864, page 261. 



56 THE METRIC SYSTEM. 

dollars, or when given as a prize for spelling, six dollars), Lip- 
pincott's Gazetteer, outline maps, charts and school apparatus, 
&c, is furnished at the lowest wholesale rate, adding only the 
cost of freight. 

The full meter should also be in every school, that the 
children may measure themselves metrically and their desks, 
seats, slates, books, the windows, dimensions of the room and 
other common objects. Every child who learns his own height 
in centimeters has a fixed standard always at hand which he 
will constantly, if not unconsciously, apply in a thousand ways. 
In this way scholars learn to use metric denominations. The 
meter-sticks serve well also for map and blackboard pointers, 
and for blackboard-ruling where. the foot rule is too short. 

That many will not appreciate the system at present is fully 
expected. No doubt some will censure the advocacy of it in 
this Report, but the certainty of appreciation by the rising 
generation, by all the children in the schools who are thus led 
to its study, will amply compensate for any such censure or 
criticism. The impressions and comments of to-day are trifles 
compared with the broad results of the future. Teachers 
should view the difficulties and duties of the present in per- 
spective, and learn the effect of time as well as space in minify- 
ing that which seems great only when near, and magnifying 
whatever is just and true, however old or humble. As leaders 
of public sentiment, instead of the old routine, merely meet- 
ing the requirements of parents to-day, they should, with a 
wise foresight, prepare their pupils for the new demands of the 
morrow — the certain exigences of this progressive age. 

METRIC STANDARDS FOR THE STATES. 

The following official statement by J. E. Hilgard, Inspector 
of United States Standard Weights and Measures, shows the 
remarkable care and accuracy with which they have been 
prepared. Every device of modern science has been applied to 
render them unalterable and indestructible. A complete set 
of Metric Standards has been furnished to each State. 

List of standards furnished to the States. 
Length : One meter, end measure. One meter, line measure, 
divided. 



METRIC STANDARDS FOR THE STATES. 57 

Weight: One kilogram. One demi-kilogram. One gram, 
with subdivisions. One myriagram, or ten kilograms. 

Capacity : One liter. One decaliter. 

Particulars of Meters. — The end measure is of cast steel, ten 
millimeters thick, thirty wide, with cylindrical ends, and small 
cylindrical projections in the axis, of hardened steel, with abut- 
ting faces three millimeters in diameter, equal to one meter, 
legal standard of France, at the temperature of melting ice. 
The divided line measure is of brass, composed of three parts 
of copper to one of zinc, the bar extending beyond the terminal 
lines ; divided into decimeters, one decimeter into centimeters, 
and one centimeter into millimeters, the length between the 
terminal lines being equal to one meter at a temperature of the 
bar of about 68° Fahrenheit, or 20° centigrade, and each bar 
bears an inscription stating the temperature at which its length 
is equal to one meter. Each of these line measures is provided 
with a convenient tracing frame for copying the division. 

Particulars of Weights. — The kilogram is of brass, of an 
ascertained specific gravity ; it is equal when weighed in a 
vacuum to the weight of the French platinum standard kilo- 
gram in vacuum. Demi-kilogram, gram, and fractions to milli- 
gram. Myriagram, or ten kilograms. The form of the weights 
is similar to the present American standard weights, so as to be 
handled with hooks, forks, and pincers, which are provided. 

Particulars of Capacity Measures. — The standard liter is of 
brass, composed of fifteen parts of the brass used for the meters, 
melted together with twelve parts of copper, and one part of 
tin ; of a form similar to the American quart, containing a vol- 
ume of distilled water, which, when weighed in vacuum equals, 
the weight of one French standard kilogram in vacuum, the 
water being at the temperature of its greatest density, and the 
vessel at the same temperature. The dekaliter contains ten 
liters, as thus defined. 

The three packing-boxes contain a set of standard metric 
weights and measures, carefully packed in walnut cases. The 
packing-box marked " Weight " contains a myriagram, kilo- 
gram, demi-kilogram, gram, and the decimal fractions of a gram 
to include a milligram. The box marked " Volume " contains 
a dekaliter and liter, with their ground-glass covers. The box 



58 THE METEIC SYSTEM. 

marked " Length " contains two walnut cases. In one of these 
is packed a steel meter, with hardened steel ends protected by 
brass caps ; this is an end measure. The other walnut case 
contains a brass meter, which is divided into decimeters, centi- 
meters, and millimeters, and is a line measure. In the same 
case and lying parallel with the brass meter is a bar of wood of 
the same dimensions as the meter, held firmly in its place by 
means of wooden wedges. This is so placed as to show the 
manner in which a bar of brass of the same dimensions can be 
secured for the purpose of having transferred upon it the meter 
and its decimal parts. A tracer is packed in the box with the 
meter, and is operated in the following manner: After the 
brass bar, on which it is desired to have the meter and its parts 
transferred, is well secured in position by means of the wooden 
wedges, the tracer is placed upon the standard bar in such a 
position that the short line under the magnifying glass shall 
accord with a line on the standard bar, and while held firmly 
in this position, the movable portion of the tracer holding the 
cutter is passed carefully over the brass bar, making a mark 
upon it at right angles with its length. The tracer is then 
moved so as to accord with another line on the standard bar 
and another cut made on the brass bar. This operation is con- 
tinued until a complete copy of the standard is transferred to 
the brass bar. By the side of the cutter is a long steel screw, 
which can be set as a guide to determine the depth of the cut 
made by the cutter. A revolving head on the tracer, with two 
notches filed in it, is placed there for the purpose of determin- 
ing the length of the line cut. A steel screw in the movable 
portion of the tracer is so placed as to strike against this head 
and stop the motion of the cutter in that direction, and it will 
be readily seen that three different lengths of lines may be 
made by moving the head so that the stop-screw will at differ- 
ent times strike on the face of the revolving head and in the 
notches. Before the brass bar is put in place it will be neces- 
sary to have it well prepared with a smooth surface, having 
lines traced on it in the direction of its length, similar to those 
on the standard. The standard bar should never be removed 
from its place in the case. The weights should never be 
touched with the naked hand. Lifters are placed in the cases. 



EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FKOM THE CENTENNIAL. 59 



EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FEOM THE CENTENNIAL. 

The Centennial Exposition was a school for the nation. Its 
lessons are manifold. The grandest product of American 
Education — the proudest exhibit at Philadelphia — was the vis- 
itors themselves. This product is as directly traceable to our 
schools as are the fabrics there shown to the mills that made 
them. 

That so many millions of people* could attend the Exposi- 
tion, and that 268,653 by actual count of the unerring turn- 
stiles should gather there in a single day, not only without vio- 
lence, but maintaining order, quiet and decorum, and showing 
proofs of self-command, sobriety and education, reflects more 
honor upon our nation than did all the works of art, skill and 
inventive talent there displayed. That this Exposition, 
though receiving less aid from the general government than 
any other — mainly a voluntary work of the people — the fruit 
of private munificence, should prove of all others, our foreign 
visitors themselves being judges, the largest in extent, the 
best in quality, the fullest in attendance, and the first that 
ever proved a financial success, is also a tribute to American 
schools — a demonstration of the practical value of universal 
education, without which such achievements would have been 
an impossibility. Our visitors from abroad were struck by 
the self-poise and orderly bearing of our people — by the 
absence of gendarmes, so conspicuous everywhere in the old 
world. Nowhere in Europe would so large a throng be 
allowed to assemble without the presence of the military, 
which masks the necessity of constantly and visibly guarding 
the State, under the semblance of giving eclat to all public 
occasions and celebrations.f 

* The total number of admissions was 9,789,392. 

f Prof. Wm. H. Brewer, who, as one of the Bureau of Judges, spent most of 
the summer at Philadelphia, reports to me the following conversation of a foreign 
officer : — 

" I have been here some months, and have seen great crowds at the Exposition, 
sometimes over a hundred thousand in a day. They cover the ground like ants, 
but the strangest thing to me is, that there are no riots, no disturbance, no vio- 
lence, and yet no soldiers are here to hold the people in check. I have seen some 
military companies, playing soldiers and coming in their uniforms to see the show, 



60 EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FROM THE CENTENNIAL. 

This Exposition has broadened the views of millions. It 
was to them the world in miniature where they gained new 
ideas of the achievements of modern civilization. While 
examining the productions of almost every nation of the 
globe, they breathed a cosmopolitan air — a healthful corrective 
of conceit, narrowness, prejudice and exclusiveness, enlarging 
each one's acquaintance and sympathies, and making more real 
the great brotherhood of the human family. 

Travel is an important means of education. Personal obser- 
vation gathers the most striking materials for investigation and 
reflection. But the Exposition, like an extended panoramic 
tour, epitomized to the many the lessons which a trip around 
the world amplifies to a few. In a brief time and at compar- 
atively little expense, it showed many millions of people what 
it would have cost each one months, if not years, to learn by 
travel alone. It was also a school of fellowship and good 
feeling. The intermingling of our people from the north 
and south, the east and west, meeting on common ground at 
the centennial anniversary of the Republic, forming new social 
ties, strengthening old associations, kindling patriotic fervor 
and fraternizing all, was a timely antidote to the repellent 
influences of an intense political struggle. 

The intermingling also of representatives of the great civil- 
ized and semi-civilized nations of the globe, meeting on the 
common ground of sympathy with the progress of humanity, 
each nation willing to impart, and anxious to receive, all 
more or less prompted to deeds of national generosity, and all 
mutually revealing and discovering new traits of excellence — 
was of incalculable value in disposing the people of the world 

but taking no part in preserving the peace. While there has been no rowdyism, 
I have seen plenty of ill manners — well dressed women for example — taking hold 
of a Chinese Commissioner's cue to see if it were real hair, or stop and stare at a 
Spanish Guard's bright uniform or a Turk's costume, and ill-bred bbys point and 
laugh at his baggy trousers. In my country, no woman, however strong her curi- 
osity, would show such ill breeding ; and yet, with all our politeness, we must 
keep soldiers always at hand to restrain the people from disorder, riots and 
pillage. But with all the ill manners in America, the people seem very kind, 
stepping aside for a rolling chair, and even outside, when there is a horrible 
rush for the cars, with pushing and rudeness, nobody fights, but all seem good- 
natured. All this is very curious to me." 



EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FROM THE CENTENNIAL. 61 

to international peace. Harmonious conferences in cases of 
national disagreements, and arbitrations like that of Geneva, 
will be the necessary sequences of the hearty international ex- 
hibition of 1876 ; and so long as Krupp cannons and monitor 
turrets are sent as delegates to such a reunion of a common 
human brotherhood, they will be far less likely to do that fear- 
ful work in the destruction of human life for which they are 
designed. 

Every scholar who saw the magnificent exhibits of China 
and Japan will more easily orient himself and henceforth study 
the geography and history of those countries with livelier 
interest. Still more will a new charm and vividness be 
imparted to all delineations of the nearer nations of Europe. 
It was a great and grateful^ surprise to all, that in the three 
departments of Bronze, Lacquer and Ceramic works, Japan was 
unrivaled. The brightness and intelligence of the one hundred 
and fifteen Chinese students whom I escorted from Hartford to 
Philadelphia, their quiet and gentlemanly deportment and still 
more their examination papers and English compositions shown 
in the Connecticut Educational Exhibit, have already modified 
public sentiment as to the character and capacity of that most 
populous nation of the globe. These written exercises were 
pronounced by eminent educators, including many State and 
city superintendents of schools, among the most remarkable 
papers of the kind in the Exposition. The Bureau of Judges 
for Educational Exhibits, of which Sir Charles Eeed, LL.D., of 
London, was President, gave a special award to this work of 
Chinese students in the following words : "The work shown is 
generally good, some of it of very extraordinary excellence, show- 
ing on the part of the pupils, not only great proficiency and 
ability, but remarkable command of the English language and 
thoroughness in their studies. By introducing into the schools 
of this country so large a number of Chinese youth, the 
Chinese government has rendered a great service to the people 
of China and contributed somewhat to the solution of a question 
of vast importance to this country." These promising Chinese 
students — already favorites in the choicest schools and families 
of New England, and winning prizes for their proficiency, in 
competition with American boys, — ought by their example and 



62 EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FROM THE CENTENNIAL. 

achievements to counteract the prejudice against their race, 
current along our Pacific coast, and thus, in the words of the 
Judges' award, "contribute somewhat to the solution of a 
question of vast importance to this country." 

This educational scheme is a new departure for the oldest 
and largest nation of the globe, and initiates a national move- 
ment most significant and prophetic, promising to expand into 
broad agencies and vast results. These ambitious students 
when equipped with the best education — academic, collegiate, 
and professional — which America can give in a thorough 
course of fifteen years, will return to China as the exponents of 
the highest civilization, and become the benefactors of their 
country by introducing modern science, inventions and internal 
improvements. This far-reaching plan has enlisted the cordial 
sympathy of the most intelligent minds in our country. It was 
a fit expression of this national feeling when the President of 
the United States honored these students with a special recep- 
tion at Philadelphia, personally greeting each one, and the 
President and the Director General of the Exposition, Presidents 
of Colleges and other eminent men addressed them in Judges' 
Hall. It is a compliment to Connecticut that Hartford is 
selected as the permanent head quarters of the Chinese Educa- 
tional Commission, for the support of which the Chinese gov- 
ernment has appropriated one million and a half of dollars. 
The United States Minister at Peking forwarded to me some- 
time ago a letter addressed to him by Prince Kung the Prime 
Minister of China, the following extract from which shows 
how gratefully his government appreciates the reception 
accorded to these students. 

" The generous and thoughtful kindness of the Connecticut 
Superintendent of Education towards each of the students is 
plainly apparent. Such generosity is worthy of praise and 
commendation ; it is highly appreciated by this Government 
and will be gratefully remembered. When communicating 
with your Government, I beg that you will convey to those who 
h« T e so kindly manifested an interest in the educational mis- 
sion my warmest thanks. Such acts of kindness tend to 
strengthen and make lasting the sympathy and friendship now 



EDUCATIONAL LESSONS FKOM THE CENTENNIAL. 63 

so happily existing between your country and mine, a fact 
which will be as gratifying to your Excellency as to me. 

With thanks and compliments, etc., 
Card of Prince Kung. 

There has been in some portions of our country a deeply-seated 
prejudice towards the semi-civilized nations of the world, which 
does them injustice and lessens our power to promote their 
progress and our own commercial growth. We realize and 
magnify their deficiencies, while we are ignorant of their good 
qualities, in some of which they are even our superiors. 
There are two chief sources of such prejudice : the superficial 
nature of the reports on which our information is founded, 
coming to us originally through the geography of the school- 
room ; and the unfair characterization of a whole nation from 
the ill-conditioned emigrants who reach our shores. But to be 
able to deal justly and wisely with a weaker people, instead of 
indulging in contempt for their deficiencies, we must ascertain 
and keep before us those points in which they deserve our re- 
spect. This the Exhibition has enabled us to do, especially 
toward the great Empires of Eastern Asia. Kash legislation 
in regard to the Chinese on our Pacific coast may have thus 
received a permanent check. 

Our commercial intercourse with China, already great, is rap- 
idly growing. The new demand there for American cottons is 
one of many illustrations of its growing importance. America 
cannot afford to alienate China. In no other direction is there 
such room for the expansion of our trade and commerce as with 
China and Japan. Our nearest neighbors across the Pacific, 
they may contribute immensely to our prosperity. This is not 
the place to discuss the influence of the Exposition in fostering 
our industrial growth and manufacturing and commercial enter- 
prises, though it has already created a large demand for 
American wares in foreign markets. It is a significant fact 
that the excess in the value of our exports abo^e imports 
during the three months ending January 1, 1877, was greater 
than in any other three months in our history. 

One feature of the exhibits is worth noticing as showing 
either a radical difference of type between the Occidental and 
the Oriental mind ; or else, what is far more probable, the dif- 



64 SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE. 

ference between the results of the imperfect, traditional, fossil- 
ized education of the great empires of Asia, and that education 
of Christian civilization which we enjoy. Close observers have 
remarked that while in the exhibits of the so-called Christian 
nations the displays of skill were largely inventive, that is, 
devising new combinations and appliances for increasing com- 
fort or productiveness, the skill of Oriental nations, perhaps 
no less wonderful of its kind, showed itself to be but feebly 
inventive, being essentially and laboriously imitative — a repro- 
ducing of old ideas in innumerable forms of minute expert- 
ness in handicraft. Invention implies increase of power and 
growth of ideas and character. Mere imitation keeps a nation 
repeating itself for ages. 

This tendency on our part to the invention of machines and 
appliances which confer on society new power, and to the 
bringing forward of new ideas which uplift whole communities 
into a higher stage of existence, and into broader fields of 
influence, may be largely attributed to the nature and the 
breadth of our popular education. If the common school of 
Europe and America did have but a scanty corner or two in 
the vast show, it was nevertheless represented as a leading 
factor in results, throughout all the broad displays of inventive 
genius which filled those great halls. But for the work which 
our present type of education has done and is doing, Machinery 
Hall, at least, would have been as silent as the grave. 

SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE. 

Photographs of school houses were shown in nearly all of 
our State Exhibits at Philadelphia. New Jersey displayed 
over four hundred photographs of school buildings. Next to 
New Jersey in the proportion of her school houses represented 
was Connecticut. No city of its size in America can show 
better school edifices than Hartford, nearly all of which were 
finely represented at the Exposition. There has been of late 
great improvement in school architecture in Connecticut, and 
throughout the country. In this respect we need not shrink 
from comparison with any European country. 

In anticipation of the International Exposition of 1878, not 
to say as a part of it, Austria erected two or three magnificent 



SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE, 65 

school edifices in her capital which, though excellent, are ex- 
ceptional in that country. They did not seem to me to justify 
the glowing picture of "Austria's splendid school architecture" 
by an enthusiastic visitor of the Vienna Exposition, who was 
equally eloquent on "the superb Swedish school house there 
erected, which was a perfect gem, a genuine model, and alto- 
gether unrivalled in America." This wonderful Swedish 
school house reappeared in Fairmount Park, and however unique 
and interesting as a specimen of Swedish style and work- 
manship, it did not furnish a single new suggestion of any 
value to us, for the poor specimens of ill-ventilated school 
houses still found in many of our country districts have long 
since been condemned by the friends of education, and are fast 
disappearing. The Swedish house, while not by any means 
extraordinary, is a good one, and it is exceedingly gratifying to 
learn from the Swedish Minister of Public Instruction, that "the 
school law prescribes that every school house shall hereafter be 
constructed substantially in accordance with this plan. The 
rooms must be large, light, lofty, cheerful, provided with fire- 
places, and generally arranged with strict regard to the health 
of the scholars and necessary conveniences of instruction." 

In connection with her general Exhibit in the Main Building, 
Belgium showed a much better model school house, reduced 
in size. When visiting a large number of schools in that 
country, I found nothing like this beautiful model, but on the 
other hand, many proofs of their great need of it. This model 
illustrates not what is, but rather what is to be in Belgium. 
The plan has lately been devised by the Central Commission 
of Primary Instruction and the Superior Council of Hygiene, 
and was adopted by the government in 1874. Nothing 
offended me more in visiting hundreds of schools in Europe, 
than the bad air one was compelled to inhale. But in this plan 
a thorough system of ventilation is adopted, which is well 
described by Hon. E. A. Apgar. 

"There is a three-fold arrangement for the supply of fresh 
air. (1) The surbase is set off from the wall about four inches 
and covered with perforated zinc. This forms an open space 
completely around the room. This space communicates with 
the outside by several openings, each about eight inches in 



66 SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE. 

diameter. . These communications may be closed or left open 
at the will of the teacher. The air enters these openings, but 
instead of passing directly into the room it strikes the surbase 
and is reflected upwards into the room through the perforated 
zinc. (2) The lower sash of the window is intended to remain 
closed, the upper sash is hung on hinges on its lower edge, and 
so arranged that it can be opened by drawing the upper edge 
within the room. The angle it can make to the vertical wall 
is thirty degrees. The air in entering this opening comes in 
contact with this inclined sash and is reflected upward against 
the ceiling and down into the room. Thus the force of the cur- 
rent is here spent before it reaches the children. (3) The stove, 
instead of depending upon the air of the room for the oxygen 
it needs to support combustion, receives its supply directly 
from out of doors through an opening or passage way under 
the floor. Thus there is an abundant supply of fresh air into 
the room, and the children are all secure from draught. There 
is a double arrangement for the exit of foul air: (1) There is a 
register in the floor in each corner of the room, from each of 
which there is a passage way or flue under the floor. These 
flues come together and unite under the stove and there com- 
municate with a flue in the stove that leads out of doors 
through the roof. This passage way for the foul air is along 
side the hot-air flue, it therefore becomes heated and draught 
is produced, which tends to draw the foul air, which finds its 
place near the floor, from the room. (2) A passage way 
around the edge of the ceiling is made with perforated zinc sim- 
ilar to that around the room below. This communicates with 
the outside by four pipes, one at each corner. These pipes are 
about eight inches in diameter and are capped with an elbow 
and vane so arranged that the mouth is always turned in the 
direction the wind is blowing. This has the effect of causing 
a draught also, and the foul air that finds its place near the 
ceiling is drawn from the room." 

It is an encouraging fact that the school houses recently 
erected in this State have been built in accordance with the 
carefully prepared plans given in our late Reports. Our new 
school houses in the rural districts, though inexpensive, are 
generally well planned and ventilated, and adapted to their 
purpose in regard to health and convenience. 



SCHOOL FURNITURE. 67 



SCHOOL FUKNITUKE. 



The school furniture shown both in Swedish, Belgian, and 
Canadian Exhibits, and in the photographic representations 
from other countries, was far inferior to ours. This is true of the 
furniture found generally in the schools of Europe. The very 
best I found abroad was called " American school furniture.' 1 
Manufacturers in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France, 
copied the school furniture exhibited by Americans in the 
Paris Exposition in 1867. Hence originated a new style 
widely used in European countries, which though a great 
improvement on their old seats and desks, is not yet equal to 
the best in use here. 

The improved seats are recommended mainly because they 
favor erectness of posture. But it must be admitted that with 
poor seats, sometimes only deal planks, the posture of pupils 
in the French, Swiss and German schools is far better than 
that of American youth in our best furnished houses. The 
admirable attitude of foreign scholars, even when sitting on 
plain boards, was a mystery to me, till I discovered that the 
military spirit was all -pervasive. Every boy in Germany ex- 
pecting to spend at least two years in camp, is early trained 
at school to be "erect as a soldier." "Sit up," is the oft-re- 
peated command. "Sit up — a pretty officer or soldier, you 
would make, bent up like half a keg hoop." Well would it be, 
if American youth, so often enervated by stooping, would im- 
itate this example in European schools. No words need to be 
so often repeated by the American teachers as " sit up." Noth- 
ing will tend more to improve our national health, for compar- 
atively we are a stooping people. Our youth should learn that 
they will live the longer and be the stronger if they sit erect, 
walk erect, run erect, work erect, and sleep — at least straight, 
always keeping the form in position to breathe deep and full, 
and at every inhalation take in the fullest amount of air. 
Erectness and the habit of deep breathing are the best pre- 
ventives of the pulmonary diseases now so frequent and fatal 
in this country. Compression of the lungs by dress is common 
and hurtful, but compression of the vital organs by bad posture 
is far more common and injurious. 



68 SCHOOL APPAEATUS AND APPLIANCES. 

SCHOOL APPARATUS AND APPLIANCES. 

The Educational Exhibits made by our States consisted 
mainly of scholars' work, those of European countries, chiefly 
of school apparatus and appliances, in which they greatly excel, 
and teach us a much needed lesson. The contrast between 
European and American school rooms in their equipments is 
striking. With superior buildings and more elegant and costly 
furniture, our bare school rooms have far less provision for 
illustration. This was admirably shown in the complete outfit 
of the Swedish School House, the walls of which were nearly 
covered with charts for teaching every department of natural 
history, physiology, and botany; maps, drawing copies, and 
charts for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Their 
charts in natural history were of such rare excellence, that I 
tried to procure them for our Normal School, but found that 
they were already sold to Japan. I secured two large volumes 
containing many hundred species from their grand herbarium. 
Here were eight cases containing their ordinary species of moss, 
lichen, and fungi. In other cases were stuffed specimens of 
mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and preserved molluscs ; and 
minerals, shells, corals, fossils, grains, seeds, nuts, woods, 
and insects. As illustrating a plan I have long recommended 
to teachers, I purchased the large case of native woods here 
shown, such as any teacher might procure for his school 
without any cost. Our youth need to be taught the beauty of 
our native woods, and to discriminate the different kinds of 
wood by the grain. There were maps showing the geology as 
well as the geography of Sweden, and also the rainfall, temper- 
ature and density of population of the different sections of the 
country. Besides a small set of philosophical and chemical 
apparatus, there were shown geometric forms and Metric Weights 
and Measures. The latter is an appliance usually found in the 
schools of the Continent, and just beginning to be introduced 
into the schools of America. Notation is taught in the Swedish 
schools by bundles of small sticks like long matches, tied to- 
gether in packages of tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on, 
placed in a board with holes in the unit place for single sticks, 
in the tens place, for the packages of tens, and so on. A clock 
face with movable hands served to show how to read the time, 



SCHOOL APPARATUS AND APPLIANCES. 69 

the teacher setting it and the scholars reading the time, or 
the scholars each in turn both setting and reading the time. 
Upon the school organ was a blank musical staff, on which by 
an ingenious contrivance the notes instantly darted into place as 
the teacher played the instrument, so that the notes were 
sounded and shown at the same instant. 

In the Belgian school house were shown most of the same 
appliances as in the Swedish, especially the specimens in natural 
history, and samples of woods, minerals, insects, and other 
objects found in the vicinity of the school ; also, celestial and 
terrestrial globes, geometric forms, a printed programme of 
study, and a thermometer for each room ; a library of reference 
books, copies and models for drawing and for lessons in archi- 
tecture, and a set of Metric scales, weights and measures, also a 
variety of fabrics of leather, linen, woolen, silks, and the like, 
arranged in connection with the material out of which they 
were made, and this material shown in various stages of growth 
or preparation. The crucifix and a bust or portrait of the 
king are usually found in the Belgian schools. The apparatus 
for light gymnastics are also common. Gymnastics are widely 
practiced in Switzerland, Grermany, Austria, Belgium, and some 
other European countries. 

Switzerland showed most of the same appliances and besides 
some excellent needle and worsted work done by girls. Advo- 
cating industrial schools for girls as well as boys, I endeavored 
to procure the latter to illustrate the practicability of similar 
work here. These interesting specimens for the present have 
been returned, as originally promised, to the Cantons that fur- 
nished them, but I have arranged to secure either these or others 
like them, during the present year, for our Normal School. 
The influence of Industrial Schools in Switzerland, Germany, 
and other European countries, is as important in dignifying 
labor as in increasing its efficiency and productive value. Girls 
as well as boys are there taught, both in the family and school, 
that to learn to be useful is alike their interest, privilege, and 
duty. The too common theory with us that labor is a degrad- 
ing drudgery, and the aspiration for genteel employments, have 
ruined myriads of our young men and brought financial disas- 
ter to the nation. These mischievous notions ought to be re- 
4 



70 SCHOOL APPAEATUS AND APPLIANCES. 

futed in our schools, where our youth should be taught the 
necessity and dignity of labor, the evils of indolence, and the 
sin and folly of this wide-spread disdain for manual labor. 
This sentiment, that labor is servile and degrading, is one of the 
worst effects of American slavery that survive it. The Swiss 
schools not only have the metric weights and measures, but 
require the pupils to weigh objects and work out extemporized 
problems of cost per kilo of common objects of traffic. The 
Swiss had a remarkable display of maps ; among these were 
two made by General Dufour of the Swiss army, which are 
regarded by competent judges as the finest in the world. The 
Swiss also showed beautiful patterns for lace and other orna- 
mental work from their schools of design. 

The exhibition of school apparatus made by Canada was a 
grateful surprise to most Americans. It was the fullest and 
finest collection of school and college equipments shown at 
Fairmount Park, comprising choice philosophical and astro- 
nomical instruments ; powerful microscopes ; charts, maps, 
relief-maps, globes, models, and other geographical appliances; 
chemicals and chemical appliances, and anatomical and physio- 
logical requisites ; and, indeed, embracing every appliance from 
"the gifts and occupations" of the Kindergarten to the appa- 
ratus of the college. In a visit to Toronto a few years since, 
I was greatly interested in the Grand Educational Depository, 
which the Government of Ontario had established in that city. 
It contains casts of antique and modern statues, busts, etc., 
selected from the principal museums of Europe, including the 
busts of the most celebrated characters in English and French 
history, also copies of many works of the great masters in the 
different schools of painting. These are all labelled for the 
information of those not familiar with the originals. The ob- 
ject is to improve the public taste, and enable those who have 
not the means to travel abroad, to see in the form of accurate 
copies the works of the great masters. On the plan of 
helping those who help themselves, kindred to that of the 
Connecticut Library Appropriation, the government appro- 
priates within certain limits, an amount equal to that raised by 
the local authorities for the purchase of apparatus, prize- books, 
text-books and books for school libraries. These are furnished 



SCHOOL APPARATUS AND APPLIANCES. 71 

from the Toronto Depository at two-thirds the retail price, and 
by the aid of the government appropriation, may be procured 
by any educational institution at only one-third the retail price. 
The grand exhibit made at Philadelphia was sent directly from 
this great Depository. So far as my observation has extended, 
the schools of Canada have as yet but partially accepted this 
most wise and liberal provision for securing apparatus. Their 
own statistics confirm the impressions made by visiting 
Canadian schools. This Department in twenty-one years has 
sent out 1,461 Geographical maps, 144 Scriptural and Classical 
maps, 123 globes, 43 sets of apparatus, and 446 single pieces of 
apparatus. Compared with the number of schools in Ontario, 
(about five thousand), this showing hardly equals the supply 
of similar material furnished to schools of Connecticut in the 
same period. But the distribution of books by this agency has 
been surprising. There have been sent to 4,310 Public 
Libraries over 273,000 volumes, and also for awards to scholars 
839,455 prize-books. The stimulus to studiousness by prizes 
has been carried further in Ontario than in any country within 
my knowledge. 

To encourage the formation of School Cabinets of Minerals, 
and collections illustrating the practical sciences, specimens in 
Natural History and in other scientific departments, are fur- 
nished for schools on the same terms as are books and appa- 
ratus ; and the cooperation of teachers and scholars is enlisted 
in gathering collections from their own neighborhood. This 
work of the Depository is worthy of special commendation and 
imitation in this country. 

The Entomological Society of London, Ontario, had a mag- 
nificent display at Philadelphia, contained in eighty-six boxes 
made of handsome native woods. Nearly all the insects found 
in Canada were here finely represented, being duly classified 
and labelled. Some of these were very rare and beautiful. 
The beetles and butterflies with their brilliant colors were so 
arranged as to make a most attractive show. In cases placed 
above and around the Entomological Exhibit, were tastefully 
arranged groups of native animals, and collections of birds 
with richly colored plumage, and over all were the heads of 
the elk with massive antlers. 



72 SCHOOL APPAEATUS AND APPLIANCES. 

The French, who greatly excel in the nicety of their work 
and the accuracy of their measurements in delicate apparatus, 
showed some superior philosophical, astronomical, and acoustic 
instruments. The appliances for illustrating the laws and phe- 
nomena of sound were remarkable, including tuning-forks from 
fifteen grams (half ounce) to many kilograms, by which sixty- 
five different tones can be detected in a single octave, and 
also instruments giving all the vowel sounds. 

The School Exhibit of Japan was a new revelation to many, 
as much as were her beautiful lacquer, bronze and ceramic works. 
Photographic views of their old school rooms were shown in 
striking contrast with interior views of the new. In the one the 
pupils sat on their feet, placed behind them in a posture which 
an American adult could hardly take, and still less endure for 
any length of time, and yet the posture which, until recently, 
has been universal in Japan for all classes, and alike the old 
and young ; the other was a representation of our most im- 
proved school room and furniture. 

The introduction of chairs is a grand benefaction of civiliza- 
tion to Japan. Some of the finest chairs shown in the 
Exposition were those made in Japan. The elegant mansion of 
the Japanese Minister in Washington is furnished in part with 
beautiful chairs of Japanese make. The old posture of the 
Japanese hindered the circulation of the blood in the lower 
limbs and favored a stooping posture and introversion of the 
feet. Besides various appliances for teaching gymnastics, the 
Japanese Exhibit included an excellent set of chemical and 
philosophical apparatus of Japanese workmanship, cases of 
shells, molluscs, reptiles, insects, birds, fish and pressed botan- 
ical specimens, also charts for reading, writing, arithmetic, 
drawing, and a most beautiful series of colored charts in natural 
history and botany. I should deem it most fortunate for Con- 
necticut if every school was supplied with charts so admirable 
as these for teaching natural history and botany, a set of which, 
presented to me by Hon. Fujimaro Tanaka, the Minister of 
Public Instruction, may be seen at the office of the Board of 
Education. As a slight expression of our appreciation of his 
courtesy, I have sent him a set of our various appliances for 
teaching the Metric System. 



PEDAGOGIC MUSEUMS. 73 



PEDAGOGIC MUSEUMS. 

Many of the European Governments have liberally donated 
their Centennial Exhibits to the United States Government. 
For their reception, a new building on the grounds of the 
Smithsonian Institution has already been planned, in which 
one large wing is set apart for a Pedagogic Museum. The 
educational appliances embraced in these foreign gifts are nearly 
enough to fill this large wing. Once organized, it will be a 
nucleus around which will be gathered the material for an 
ample Educational Museum. Such an institution is greatly 
needed in this country. The importance and usefulness of 
such a museum were happily illustrated in the grand display 
made at Philadelphia by the Pedagogic Museum of St. Peters- 
burg. The Educational Exhibit of Russia evinces the thor- 
oughness and success with which industrial and technical edu- 
cation has been recently organized in that country. The great 
Pedagogic Museum at St. Petersburg has contributed much to 
this result. The statements here given on this subject are 
condensed from the Russian Reports. This Museum is de- 
signed to collect and diffuse information in regard to the best 
school apparatus made in Russia or abroad, and to exhibit 
the fullest possible collection of the same, so as to facilitate 
selection and purchase to suit individual requirements. 
Experts are employed rigidly to test these various appliances 
and determine their comparative merits, and in case of need, 
introduce improvements required, and to reduce the cost of their 
production and sale to the lowest practicable figures. Through 
the Russian Ministers and other agents in foreign countries, this 
museum is continually collecting information in regard to 
school apparatus and appliances in other lands. Russian 
agents carefully studied our Exposition, as they have all others 
where pedagogic apparatus has been shown, collecting cata- 
logues and price lists, and procuring specimens of school appara- 
tus for the St. Petersburg museum. The following partial list of 
illustrative objects, given in round numbers, suggests the extent 
of the museum : For use in religious instruction, 70 charts, 
etc.; in Mathematics, 120 ; Natural Philosophy, 400 ; Natural 
History, 600 ; Cosmography, 100 ; Geography, 300 ; Political 



74 PEDAGOGIC MUSEUMS. 

History, 200 ; Drawing, 100 ; Calligraphy and Stenography, 50 ; 
Course of Elementary Schools, 50; Home and School Kinder- 
garten, 250 ; Gymnastics, 40 ; Music, 80 ; Hygiene, 200 ; 
Specimens of school and class furniture, 2,700 : Slides for the 
magic lantern, 4,000 ; teachers' library, 12,000, and pedagogic 
periodicals, 50. Drawing from so ample a museum, it is not 
strange that Kussia made a most interesting and instructive 
exhibit, including charts, maps, models and apparatus for 
teaching Keligion, Reading, Writing, Geometric Forms, Draw- 
ing, Geography, Calligraphy, Music, Molluscs, Insects, Fishes, 
Reptiles, Birds, Minerals, and indeed nearly every department 
of Natural History, Botany, Mineralogy, Crystallography, 
Ethnography, Political History, and Physics. 

The museum contains a large collection of native woods, 
polished both with and across the grain. As the abacus is 
generally used in their schools, several large ones were shown 
at the Exposition, also models for drawing, and some superior 
drawings from the specimens in the Zoological collection, and 
also very fine anatomical aids. To supply the demand in 
schools which cannot afford the originals, excellent imitations 
are made in papier mache. The collection includes over two 
hundred models, showing all the Russian costumes ; for the 
Russian nation is heterogeneous and curiously composite in its 
character. The whole apparatus, while admirably adapted to 
all grades of schools and colleges, is purposely plain in style, 
in order that it may be afforded at the lowest price. The mu- 
seum, however, is a place of exhibition, encouraging its pro- 
duction and use, and not, like that of Toronto, for the sale of 
school apparatus. 

The success of the St. Petersburg museum is the more 
striking in view of its recent origin. That an institution 
organized only a dozen years ago has already assumed so large 
proportions is but one of many indications of the rapid progress 
made by Russia during the last decade. 

To encourage the invention of improved school apparatus 
in all parts of the country, the Museum has proffered to the 
producers of such articles, free use of models and drawings of 
the best school appliances that could any where be found, and 
given to every inventor the privilege of exhibiting his speci- 



PEDAGOGIC MUSEUMS. 75 

mens in the Museum, with the assurance that they should be 
fairly tested and examined, and if found meritorious, duly 
"certificated," and advertised in the Pedagogical Journal, and 
shown in local or provincial exhibitions, and if worthy of such 
honor, displa} 7 ed in International Expositions at the expense 
of the Museum, while the inventors should retain all their 
rights and profits as exhibitors. Numerous provincial exhibi- 
tions under the direction of the Museum, and with its material, 
not unlike our Teachers' Institutes, served to show teachers 
and school officers the most improved methods and appliances. 
The Museum provides for free lectures and discussions on 
various educational questions and scientific topics, and dis- 
tributes widely books and catalogues of its collections, which 
are opened freely to all. 

The Pedagogic Museum of Yienna contains a large collec- 
tion of "Means of Instruction." It was represented at Phila- 
delphia onty by a series of photographs which, admirable as 
they were, did no justice to this interesting and valuable 
collection. The Pedagogical department of the South Ken- 
sington Museum of London and the Industrial Museum at 
Zurich were but partially represented. In other respects, and 
in its more appropriate field, the South Kensington Museum 
was unrivalled in the beauty and variety of its exhibit. 

The International Exhibition Company, chartered by the 
Legislature of Pennsylvania, has purchased the Main Building 
in Fairmount Park, for the purpose of conducting industrial 
exhibitions of American and foreign products, manufactures, 
works of art, and educational appliances. Many foreign gov- 
ernments have presented their u enclosures " to the company. 
These foreign courts will therefore be formed, as at the Cen- 
tennial, by the enclosures representing the style of architecture 
peculiar to the respective countries. A special feature of the 
Exhibition will be the Educational Department, for which 
thirteen thousand square feet of floor space in the most desir- 
able part of the building have been set apart. Ample funds 
are secured to supply the necessary equipments and apparatus. 
This department will include model school rooms, graded and 
ungraded; scholars 1 work from different countries, states, and 
cities; school apparatus; school-books, charts, maps.; natural 



76 GEOMETRIC FORMS. 

history collections; models, plans, and photographs of school 
buildings ; work done by students in scientific, technical, nor- 
mal, and commercial schools, in benevolent institutions, and in 
colleges ; school laws, reports, journals, blanks, and forms, and 
all educational documents; periodical literature, including 
at least one specimen of every journal, magazine, or other 
periodical issued in this country. Hon. E. A. Apgar, who 
furnishes these facts, is superintendent of this department. 
Several of the Educational Commissioners to the Centennial 
from foreign countries, the State School Superintendents of 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, and Connecticut, 
and other active friends of education, are members of the 
Council of this Department. Manufacturers of school furniture 
and apparatus, inventors, architects, and publishers, are invited 
to contribute articles for exhibition, including models, plans, 
designs, drawings, photographs of school-houses, and of heating 
apparatus, and arrangements for lighting and ventilation. All 
showcases, platforms, counters, frames, etc., needed will be pro- 
vided by the Commission without expense to those furnishing 
material. 



GEOMETRIC FOEMS. 

For many years I have advocated the teaching of form 
among the very first exercises in the Primary school, even be- 
fore the alphabet, and as the best preparation for learning the 
letters. 

The Swiss Exhibit contained three sets of geometric forms, 
made respectively of wire, wood and paper. Similar appliances 
were shown in the other foreign exhibits. These appliances 
very common in the best schools of Europe. In Switzer- 
land and Germany, as ought to be the case in America, the 
children are early taught the common forms in plain and solid 
geometry. As the letters are made of straight lines or circles, 
or a combination of the two, this greatly facilitates the mastery 
of the alphabet, and indeed of almost every other study. Much 
has already been done in the Normal School and Teachers' 
Institutes to lead our teachers to treat form as a primary and 
fundamental lesson, underlying geography, natural history, 



GEOMETRIC FORMS. 77 

and nearly all scientific studies. The child's intellectual life 
begins with the reception of impressions from the senses, which 
are the windows of the soul. The noblest of these, and the 
royal avenue to his mind, is the eye. From the outset, this is 
busy with form as seen first perhaps in its hand, its mother's 
face, the kitten, the window, and other common objects in the 
room. The child recognizes hundreds of different things by 
their shapes before he can count as high as five. Nothing 
tends so surely to sharpen the child's perceptions as the early 
study of form. If his perceptions are exact, his conceptions 
will be clear and accurate and then the natural sequence will 
be definiteness of reasoning and imagination, for the visible 
forms of nature rightly observed are best fitted to stimulate 
and train the memory and imagination. 

The majority of our scholars will never pursue geometry 
proper, but those who can never study its higher problems 
and theorems may and should all learn its forms. The ideas 
and terms thus learned will be especially useful to the carpenter, 
joiner, mason, worker in tin or in any metal, or at any trade. 

In modern education nature becomes the great teacher. 
Facts, objects, common things are made the leading instru- 
ments in developing the faculties of the juvenile mind. Plato 
well said "The Deity delights in geometrizing," for the world 
itself and everything in it is built after some geometric form 
or combinations of these forms. If then it be desirable to 
train youth to study nature, to learn the science of common 
things by early forming habits of careful and exhaustive obser- 
vation, shall we not give them the few exact forms, which, 
singly or combined, are the patterns of all objects? The 
child's mind naturally turns to form and size, and if untaught, 
his notions will be vague and confused ; if trained in these 
simple elements of geometry, they will be distinct and accurate. 
These elements are simpler than the first processes in arith- 
metic. Ideas of extension are more elementary and attractive 
than those of number. In the Kindergarten, children amuse 
themselves with combinations of form before those of number 
Whether with the paper-folding, cutting, or pricking ; with 
the wires, slats, cork, blocks, or plastic, they are creating forms 
rather than counting pieces and parts. The relations of place, 



78 GEOMETRIC FORMS. 






form, and size are among the earliest conceptions of the juve- 
nile mind. 

The supposed difficulty of the subject is imaginary. Multi- 
tudes of children from three to six years of age in the Kin- 
dergarten schools of Europe and this country are taught these 
forms. They make them with their blocks, cut them out 
in paper-pasting, shape them in paper-folding and paper-weav- 
ing, form them with wires and cork, mould them with plastic, 
draw them on the slate and blackboard, and thus easily and 
early learn them. One grand result of Kindergarten teach- 
ing is its demonstration that form is one of the earliest, easiest, 
pleasantest, and most useful occupations of the juvenile mind. 

With the gonigraph in hand, as with a sort of magic wand, 
the youngest children in the Kindergarten delight in making 
triangles, squares, rhombs, rhomboids, oblongs, pentagons, 
hexagons, circles and other forms. Because they are made 
with facility and rapidity by their own little hands, these forms 
are understood and remembered. This essential apparatus of 
the Kindergarten ought to be in every primary school. To 
facilitate its introduction it is furnished by the State Board of 
Education to the teachers of Connecticut at the cost per thou- 
sand. Jointed and divided into seven parts, and graduated 
according to both the English and French standards, it serves 
alike as the measure of the yard and meter, and forms one of 
the best helps for teaching the Metric System. 

The subject of form enters into all our perceptions, descrip- 
tions, comparisons, imaginations, calculations, and indeed into 
all the arts and occupations of men — the very texture of daily 
life. The direction which Plato placed over the door of 
the Academy, "Let no one enter without a knowledge of 
geometry," ought to be inscribed over the entrance to every 
school-house in the land, as applicable to the teacher, so far, at 
least, as relates to the common geometric forms. " Let no 
child leave even the primary school after the first term of his 
attendance without a knowledge of these forms," ought to be 
the motto plainly written on the inside of every school. 

" The curiosity which speaks in children's busy eyes and 
hands should be to us the voice of Nature, bidding us make our 
beginnings early. The infant who cannot speak, gazes earn- 



STUDY of one's veenaculae. 79 

estly and thoughtfully at the most common object, returning 
to it, and glancing from one part to another, as if to learn their 
connection. When he can walk, he goes around it, handling 
it and studying it with all his senses. When he speaks, his 
questions are of size, form, and distance. If our answers are 
careless or unsatisfactory, his quick eyes and mind, not 
blunted by habit, detect our errors. He loves comparison of 
objects, and the imaginary multiplication and extension of 
them ; he is pleased with the new and the different, and equally 
pleased with resemblance and equality to things known before. 
Happy age of natural geometry — when each look and motion, 
nay, his very games, lead the boy on to the laws which shape 
the spheres and hold the planets in their course !" 



STUDY OF ONE'S VERNACULAR. 

In the ''Course of Study" shown in the foreign educational 
exhibits, and generally adopted in the best schools of Europe 
from the Primary to the Gymnasium, Language Lessons hold 
a prominent place. Special and successful efforts have been 
made during the last four years in our Normal School, in our 
Teachers' Institutes and numerous town educational gatherings, 
to induce teachers to give greater prominence to our language 
and literature. The value of English as a culture-study has 
been a common theme in these gatherings. The motto of Pere 
GHrard of. Switzerland, "The mother tongue is the great edu- 
cator," has been thoroughly adopted and widely endorsed by 
our teachers. The prominence given to the study of their 
vernacular in the schools of Switzerland is largely due to the 
influence of that eminent educator and divine. Well would it 
be for our youth, if some Pere Grirard in America would as 
effectively ring the changes on this cardinal maxim. Although 
progress has recently been made in this direction, still, the study 
of our vernacular as a means of education does not yet receive 
its due recognition. Until recently, grammar was the only 
study in our curriculum teaching how "to speak and write the 
English language correctly." As ordinarily taught to children 
under twelve years of age, it has about as much adaptation to 



80 



STUDY OF ONE'S VERNACULAR 



this its professed design, as the study of physiology and 
anatomy would have to swimming. Useful and essential as 
grammar is, it is a diffieult study kindred to rhetoric and logic, 
and above the grasp of little children till language exercises 
have prepared the way for it. That preparation should begin 
the first day a child enters the Primary School, or rather it 
ought to begin in the home prior to school attendance. Prof. 
Whitney, in his excellent "Essentials of English Grammar," well 
says, " That the leading object of the study of English Grammar 
is to teach the correct use of English is an error, and one which 
is gradually becoming removed, giving way to the sounder 
opinion that grammar is the reflective study of language, for a 
variety of purposes, of which correctness in writing is only one, 
and a secondary or subordinate one — by no means unimportant, 
but best attained when sought indirectly. It should be a per- 
vading element in the whole school and home training of the 
young, to make them use their own tongue with accuracy and 
force ; and along with any special drilling directed to this end, 
some of the rudimentary distinctions and rules of grammar are 
conveniently taught; but that is not the study of grammar, 
and it will not bear the intrusion of much formal grammar 
without being spoiled for its own ends. It is constant use 
and practice, under never-failing watch and correction, that 
makes good writers and speakers ; the application of direct 
authority is the most efficient corrective. Grammar has its 
part to contribute, but rather in the higher than in the lower 
stages of the work. One must be a somewhat reflective user 
of language to amend even here and there a point by gram- 
matical reasons ; and no one ever changed from a bad speaker 
to a good one by applying the rules of grammar to what he 
said." 

Professor Greene says, "It is the use of language which 
chiefly concerns the learner ; its principles will gradually un- 
fold themselves." Professor Hadley says, " The ability to 
parse and analyze sentences is no guarantee of ability to suc- 
cessfully use language." The best preparation for good writing 
is good talking. Every school exercise, even the dry est drill 
in arithmetic may be a language exercise, if the class are 
always kept on the alert to notice (and correct when at its close 



STUDY OF ONE'S YEKNACULAK. 81 

the corrections are called for) any and all errors in pronuncia- 
tion or grammar. If a pupil can give an answer in fewer or 
better terms than those used by a classmate, let him always be 
encouraged to do it. Thus a generous and healthful rivalry 
may be awakened in the use of terse and felicitous expressions 
of thought. The habit of using correct language thus formed 
in conversation and recitation will lay the foundation for the 
higher work of composition. In the schools of Germany and 
Switzerland, the exercises are far nore conversational than 
with us. The text books are thoroughly studied by the 
teacher as well as by the pupils, and in all recitations, except 
in ancient or modern languages, the teacher has no text book 
in hand. To use one would be a confession of ignorance or 
want of preparation of which a German teacher would be justly 
ashamed. Hence, in the recitation, there is more of direct 
contact of mind with mind, of question and answer, of inspira- 
tion and correction than with us. The best American teachers 
now adopt this method and with good results. 

Archdeacon Hare says, "A man should love and venerate his 
native language as the first of his benefactors ; as the awakener 
and stirrer of all his thoughts, the frame and mould and rule 
of his spiritual being; as the great bond and medium of inter- 
course with his fellows; as the mirror in which he sees his own 
nature, and without which he could not even commune with 
himself ; as the image in which the wisdom of God has chosen 
to reveal itself to him." 

If this be true of one's vernacular generally, whether Italian, 
Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, or other, how much 
truer is it of the English tongue. If our youth can be led to 
a just appreciation of this their richest heritage, it will give new 
zest and interest to their study of our language and literature. 
That it is the noblest language spoken on the face of the earth 
is not a conceit of Americans and English. The most eminent 
foreign scholars bear witness to its unequalled richness. The 
distinguished German scholar, Jacob Grimm, says: "The 
English language possesses a power of expression never 
attained by any other human tongue and may with good reason 
call itself a world's language. It seems chosen like the English 
race to rule in still greater degree in all corners of the earth. 



82 STUDY OF one's veknaculak. 

In richness and flexibility, no modern tongue can compare 
with it, not even German, which must shake off many a weak- 
ness before it can enter the lists with the English. Its 
altogether intellectual and singularly happy foundation and 
development have arisen from a surprising alliance between the 
two noblest languages of antiquity, the German and the 
Romanesque— the former supplying the material — the founda- 
tion, and the latter the abstract notions." M. De Condolle says : 
u The sovereignty of the world is hereafter to belong to the 
English language. It is probable that in eighty years, it will 
be spoken by over eight hundred millions of people." Bayard 
Taylor may be cited as a competent witness to its recent diffu- 
sion. "The spread of the English language within the last 
twenty years is astonishing, resulting both from the number of 
English and American travelers who visit the East and the use 
of the language by the travelers of other nationalities. French, 
which until within the last few years was indispensable, has been 
slowly fading into the background and is already less available 
than English for Italy and all the Orient The simple, natural 
structure of the English language undoubtedly contributes to 
its extension. It is already the leading language of the world, 
spoken by double the number of the French-speaking races, and 
is so extending its conquests year by year, that its practical 
value is in advance of that of any other tongue." Many of our 
scholars will live to see the day when the English-speaking 
peoples, now little less than one hundred millions, will be more 
than doubled in numbers. 

The study of English in schools on the Continent is rapidly 
increasing and is regarded by many as an essential part of a 
finished education, and in this respect is gradually supplanting 
the French. Except the Chinese, whose syllabic character for- 
bids its spread, no other language was ever so widely used. 
As the scholars of the world are now more generally learning 
English than any other modern tongue, it is destined to become 
the leading medium of learned intercourse. 

It is a matter of just state pride that the great Lexicographer 
who more than any other one in modern times has shaped and 
developed the English language, is a son of Connecticut. There 
never before has been a great nation using one language with- 



STUDY OF ONE'S VERNACULAR. 83 

out dialects. Noah Webster has unified the language of this 
otherwise polyglot people. The circulation of his works shows 
the extent of his influence. The aggregate sale of his spelling- 
book has been between fifty and sixty millions. Noth withstand- 
ing the multitude of new spellers, the sale of this exceeds one 
million copies annually. More than thirty thousand copies of 
the Unabridged Dictionary have been placed in the public 
schools of the United States by State enactments or School 
officers. Of the Unabridged and Koyal Octavo Dictionaries 
more than half a million copies have been sold. For many 
years, the other abridgments have had an annual sale of over 
one hundred thousand copies. 

The" English race and the English language are to play the 
most prominent part in the civilization and christianization of 
the nations. The spread of this language and the increase of 
this race in numbers, wealth and influence, is one of the 
marvels of the age and unparalleled in history. The expansion 
of the Saxon race, like the growth of the oak, has been the 
work of time, but it is for all time. It has colonized all climes, 
its language is spoken round the world, and far more than any 
other, by all races, its commerce girds all seas and sweeps all 
oceans, so that literally the sun never sets on the English- 
speaking peoples. 

Commerce as well as colonization is a grand propagandist of 
language. The Saxon tongue is domiciled in every center of 
trade. Wherever floats a Saxon keel, there float with it Saxon 
words and commercial terms. It has permeated Japan and is 
entering China. It has spread through Siam and rules in 
India, for there English is already the official language, and 
the ambitious natives who aspire to official positions are 
thoroughly trained in the English language. The extraordi- 
nary exhibits at the Centennial by South Australia, Victoria, 
Queensland, Tasmania, New Zealand, Cape of Good Hope, 
Ceylon, Singapore, the Bahamas, British Guiana, Trinidad, the 
Gold Coast, and the Orange Free State, show, not only how 
lavish nature has been in her gifts to them in soil, climate, 
productions and marvellous mineral wealth, but also how 
rapidly barbarism is receding before the push, enterprise and 
energy of the Saxon race now dominant in all those vast and 



84 STUDY OF ONE'S VERNACULAR. 

varied territories. The vigorous youth of these wonderful 
colonies presages a glorious future for wealthy, populous and 
English-speaking confederacies. These facts in regard to the 
character of our language, its rich vocabulary and wealth of 
expression, its wide diffusion and the possibility of its ulti- 
mately becoming a universal language and thus fraternizing 
the world, may be fitly used by teachers to awaken a greater 
interest in its study. 

In the primary school, great prominence should be given to 
the first exercise of conversation named below. Topics of con- 
versation are endless, and for little children, the commonest are 
the best, such as familiar animals, objects, stories, incidents 
and pictures. Descriptions of scenes and of scenery, and nar- 
ration of events and experiences are more difficult and also 
more useful, requiring careful perception and accurate memory. 
Children are always interested in relating what occurred in 
their own excursions, picnics, visits or journeys — their trips in 
hunting, fishing, gathering wild flowers, berries, or nuts, their 
rambling in the woods or climbing the hills and mountains. 

The following bare outline will be intelligible to those who 
have heard the full discussions given with blackboard illustra- 
tions at our Institutes. 

PRIMARY COURSE. 

1. Conversation. 2. Printing words on the slate or board. 
Printing should be discontinued as soon as pupils can use the 
script letters. 3. Object Lessons. Their linguistic bearing sug- 
gests one of their most important results. 4. Applying fit adjec- 
tives to nouns. 5. Selecting the most characteristic adjective. 
Apply, for example, to the fox the one word jn our language 
which most fitly characterizes this animal. 6. Combining all fit 
adjectives with some noun in a sentence and yet avoid redun- 
dancy. 7-9. Mottoes — oral, printed, written. 10. Eequire all 
answers given by pupils to be in complete sentences. 11. Ask 
no questions which can be answered by "yes" or "no." 12-14. 
Dictation for repetition ; oral, the same printed, then written. 
15. Description of geometric forms. 16-17. Two or more words 
given, to form a sentence containing them — oral first, then 
written. 18-20. The reading lesson — oral, printed, written. The 



STUDY OF ONE 's VERNACULAR. 85 

pupils should state in their own language the subject matter of 
the reading lesson. 21. Pointing oat resemblance and differ- 
ence in things. 22-23. Describing pictures as seen, oral and 
written. 24-25. Describing pictures as remembered, oral and 
written. 26-27. Describing pictures as imagined, oral and writ- 
ten. 28. Descriptions of natural scenery. For example, de- 
scribe the landscape which pleased you most. 29. Description 
of one's town. Give its location, size, connections by railroads, 
&c, streets, productions, people, business, &c. 30. Description 
of one's county. 31. Description of one's State. 32. Descrip- 
tion of one's country. 33. Questions. 

The teacher should not directly tell a child anything which 
he can be stimulated to find out by his own senses or reflection. 
A single fact or truth which he discovers for himself, is 
worth a thousand which he passively receives. The design of 
the exercise, under the head of questions (number 33), is to lead 
the child carefully to observe and then describe his perceptions. 
One question, for example, may be : What is your pet animal ? 
If the child answer, a dog, then would follow others, as : Why do 
you like him? What kind of a dog is he? and others about 
his name, coat, color, size, disposition, intelligence, tricks, and 
the ways in which he is useful. What is the strongest animal ? 
How does it use its strength ? What is the most useful animal ? 
In what ways is it useful? If the subject be flies — the ques- 
tions might be: Do they bite or sting? When and where are 
they most abundant? What do they like best to eat? What 
is their greatest enemy ? What lesson does that enemy teach 
us? How do they walk on the window or the ceiling? Tak- 
ing the microscope (which should be on every teacher's desk) as 
you examine the flies' eyes, how do they compare with yours? 
Are flies of any use ? Of what use ? Should you say they are of 
no use, even if you could discover none ? Is anything created 
in vain ? These examples show what a variety of questions 
may be put in regard to the most familiar objects, which, while 
they tell him nothing, lead the child to discover and describe 
much. Once started thus on lines of observation and reflection, 
he learns how to question nature and becomes an independent 
observer. 

5 



86 STUDY OF ONE'S VERNACULAR. 

INTERMEDIATE COURSE. 

34. Supplying simple predicate to given subject. 35. Sup- 
plying simple subject to given predicate. 36. Supplying 
enlarged predicate to given subject. 37. Supplying enlarged 
subject to given predicate. 38. Constructing a sentence con- 
taining a phrase. 39. Changing the adjective into a phrase. 
40. Changing the adverb into a phrase. 41. Changing the 
phrase into an adjective. 42. Changing the phrase into an ad- 
verb. 43-44. Stories by teacher, oral and written. 45-46. 
Stories by pupils, oral and written. 47. Committing 'selections 
to memory. 

The English language and literature open a rich and large 
field of culture for the children in our schools. Nothing tends 
more to stimulate and liberalize the juvenile mind than the 
study of our best vernacular classics. Some choice selections, 
though at first it be but a stanza, couplet, or even a single line, 
or motto, should be daily memorized in our schools. The 
gems thus garnered would henceforth be both standards of 
taste and treasures of thought. This practice, common in 
Switzerland and Germany, is there made an effective means of 
liberal culture and of training the memory. One does not fully 
appreciate the gems of literature till they are memorized. The 
children in the German schools commit to memory vastly more 
than American pupils, who are often crippled for life by this 
neglect. In the delusive and premature attempt to cultivate 
the reason only, we stunt the memory. This faculty changes 
with one's years and attainments. In early life, the memory 
is circumstantial, and naturally grasps items, details, words 
and language, and easily learns to memorize poetry and prose. 
This knack of facile memorizing must be acquired early or 
never. In later years, while the memory grows more tenacious 
of principles, comprehensive facts and general truths, it re- 
tains minutiae with difficulty. The art of memorizing, early 
acquired, follows one through life, and facilitates all later 
acquisitions and higher studies. German children memorize 
so much early that they afterwards memorize easily. Ameri* 
can youth learn so little by heart that the necessary knack is 
not gained. Hence " declamations" are so much dreaded, 
because of the tough tug of memorizing a page or two of prose 



87 

or poetry which a German pupil would commit in a few min- 
utes, without conscious effort and with real pleasure. Having 
long advocated these views, there is a satisfaction in finding 
them confirmed by hundreds of teachers and parents who have 
put them to the test of successful experience. T confidently 
advise all parents and teachers to thoroughly try the experiment 
of encouraging young children to learn stories, songs, hymns 
and verses. This is done in the Kindergarten schools, not in 
the form of tasks, but in connection with their singing, their 
play*s, and those attractive occupations which develop a verbal 
memory of great value in after life. 

ADVANCED COUKSE. 

48. Eesemblances and differences in words. 49. Eesemblances 
and differences in persons. 50. Resemblances and differences 
in authors. 51. Resemblances and differences in nations. 52- 
53. Real journeys described, oral and written. 54-55. Imagin- 
ary journeys described, oral and written. 56. Letter-writing. 
57. Amplification — enlarging from outlines. 58. Condensation. 
59. Business papers. 60. Compound sentences. 61. Reducing 
compound to simple sentences. 62. Complex sentences. 63. 
Reducing complex to simple sentences. 64. Converting simple 
into complex sentences. 65. Reducing long sentences to their 
simplest form. 66. Expanding simple sentences into longer 
ones. 67. Abbreviation. 68. Turning direct into indirect 
quotation. 69. Turning indirect into direct quotation. 70. 
Variation — a. Changing the active to the passive form ; b. Ex- 
clamatory form ; c. Interrogative form ; d. Use of synonyms ; 
e. Use of contraries;/ Substituting negative for affirmative 
form. 71. Changing poetry to prose. 72. Changing prose to 
poetry. 73. Outlines and abstracts. 74. Diaries, real. 75. 
Diaries, imaginary. 76. Debates, oral and written. 77. Edi- 
torials. 78. Criticism of books. 79. Sketches — biographical, 
etc. 80. Outlines of historic periods. 81. Essays. 

Language is the grandest product of the human mind, at 
once the means and measure of its growth and the greatest instru- 
ment of human investigation and progress. It is the index 
alike of individual and national character. The refinement of 
the Greeks is still told by their tongue. Now as of old, 



88 

whether barbarian or Greek, boor or scholar, one's "speech 
bewray eth him." Language has a moral bearing. Words 
influence as well as indicate character. A slovenly style, like 
a slatternly dress, suggests and promotes want of self-respect, 
if not purity, and tends to demean and degrade. As " evil 
communications corrupt good manners," so a diction terse, 
refined, and rich in noble thoughts fosters every virtue. Or to 
put this gem in its own sacred setting, " A word fitly spoken 
is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Martineau happily 
phrases a kindred thought, "Words are great powers in this 
world ; not only telling what things are, but making them what 
else they would not be." Trench well says: "Language is the 
amber in which a thousand precious thoughts have been safely 
imbedded and preserved." 

A good workman must be master of the tools of his trade. 
The teacher's tools are both words and ideas. But language is 
the vehicle as well as the vesture of his thoughts. True, 
thought is first in the order of time and of importance, but 
to secure the development of thought through expression is the 
daily duty of the teacher. Beginning in the primary schools, 
the first aim should be the acquisition of ideas by objects, and 
then their fit utterance by words. Strictly speaking, things 
come before names and ideas before words, but practically they 
should be conjoined, for language is the casket which holds 
the ideas. The child should be treated as an active as well as 
a receptive being, one that can give as well as receive. He 
instinctively longs to speak as well as to hear. One of his 
earliest needs is aid in utterance. But repression rather than 
expression is often the result, if not the aim in school. The 
talking is by the teacher, where the pupil should first see and 
then describe. Instead of explaining an object to his pupils, 
the language of the teacher should be — " Children, examine 
carefully this object and tell me what you see." Every dis- 
covery thus made facilitates others, and forms the habit of 
observation and description. Every fit description given helps 
in future command of language and fixes the facts described in 
the memory. So also, the apt utterance of emotion intensifies 
the feelings and quickens the processes of thought. To check 
loquacity or verbiage the motto of every school should be the 
maximum of thought in the minimum of words. 



With young children, conversation should be one of the 
attractions of the school, as it is of the well-regulated home. 
Conversation should be treated as an art, and should therefore 
be cultivated with the zest of the amateur in painting and 
sculpture. Carefully practiced, it becomes a prime educator, 
awakens curiosity, sharpening perception, cultivating attention, 
and quickening both the memory and imagination, developing 
versatility, tact, and vivacity. To teach how to talk well 
should be the constant aim of both home and school training. 
Listening well is the condition of answering well. To attend 
carefully, to question to the point and respond aptly, disciplines 
every faculty. Just here is one of the greatest deficiencies of 
American schools compared with the best schools of Switzer- 
land, Germany, and England. With us, nothing of equal 
importance is so underrated as the culture of the expressive 
faculties. The noblest of all arts, in reference to the range 
and grandeur of its subjects, the greatness of its influence, and 
brilliancy of its victories, is the art of speech. The leaders of 
men in every age have gained their wide sway by this divine 
gift of speech. Luther's words were half battles." " Webster's 
words were thunderbolts." The greatest triumphs of truth are 
won by the tongue. Though it u is a little member" it 
"boasteth great things," or as Luther puts it, "accomplishes 
great things." " Magna exaltat," as Bede says. 

The culture of expression includes, as well as accompanies, 
that of all the other faculties. Perception, conception, and 
memory, fancy and imagination, the taste and the sensibilities, 
the powers of imitation, personification, and representation, 
should be trained by and for expression, for without it, one 
would be mute and unintelligible, and all these powers impris- 
oned within the soul would droop and decay. The soul, like 
a lake, grows stagnant without an outlet. Thought itself 
falters, when language fails. A linguistic taste favors that 
love of literature and fondness for books which like a divine 
light will illumine the scholar's daily life. 

Emotion is the inspiration of language. It has an irrepres- 
sible tendency to expression, kindling imagination and giving 
force to words and eloquence to speech. That "crime against 
a human soul," as Professor Kauerbach calls the history of 



90 

Kasper Hauser, illustrates the sad effects of long isolation and 
enforced silence. 

Character is moulded more by feeling than thinking, or 
rather, by thought only so far as it awakens emotion and thus 
moves the will. All men, even the most intellectual, are 
controlled more by the sensibilities than the intellect. Right 
thinking should therefore aim at the higher end of right feeling, 
and then the right expression of that feeling by words or acts. 
It is not truth alone which our nature craves — truth limited to 
the intellect, but truth so vitalizing the heart as to move the 
will and mould the character. To know the truth is indeed 
well, but to feel it is still better. Truth never triumphs till the 
perceptions of the intellect lead to the loving apprehension of 
the heart. 

Emotion is the celestial fire of all the poetry and eloquence 
that have ever swayed the minds of men. The happiest efforts 
are never the product of unimpassioned intellect. The sensi- 
bilities form the electric apparatus that draws forth the latent 
heat to kindle the life spark of thought and the fire of genius. 
" While women may feel, it is the glory of man to think and 
reason," is the shallow sneer of the cynic. This notion is com- 
mon as it is mischievous. Our educational processes aim too 
exclusively to train the intellect and ignore the sensibilities. 
The two have a mutual relationship and reciprocally influence 
each other. Neither can reach its full strength and stature 
alone. Even the lower emotions, such as the grand, the awful, 
the terrible, the ludicrous, the disgusting, and especially the 
beautiful, feed the activity of the mind. Still more our social, 
moral, and religious affections, the emotions of gratitude, rev- 
erence, humility, and love are, to the mind what air is to the 
lungs. "By our minds alone, we are mere spectators of the 
machinery of the universe ; by our emotions, we are admirers 
of nature, lovers of man, adorers of God." The culture of these 
sensibilities, therefore, is essential to give man individually or 
socially the highest refinement and power. 



NOEMAL SCHOOLS. 91 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

The official documents and school reports found in the for- 
eign Educational Exhibits at Philadelphia show the great 
prominence given to Normal Schools in Europe. Germany 
maintains one hundred and seventy, France ninety two, Italy 
fifty-nine, Austria fifty-six, Switzerland though smaller in area 
than any one of thirty American States, maintains twenty-six 
''Teachers' Seminaries." In every country of Europe that pro- 
fesses to maintain universal public education, Normal Schools 
are regarded as an essential part of the system. In Germany a 
Normal School diploma is the usual condition of the " teacher's 
license." Normal Schools in that land have long since ceased 
to be regarded as an experiment. The first institution of this 
kind and the germ of the system, since so fully developed in* 
Prussia, was organized in Halle, in 1697, by Augustus Hermann 
Franke. Hundreds of teachers from different countries of 
Europe pursued here a two years' course of pedagogics. During 
the next half century, through the influence of the pupils of 
Franke, many Normal Schools were established. They have 
been tried in Austria for more than a century. 

Though the first Normal School was established in England 
through the influence of Lord Brougham and others, less than 
forty years ago, these schools now abound in England, Ireland, 
and Scotland, and a chair of Didactics has lately been estab- 
lished in the University of Edinburgh, in which Prof. S. S. 
Laurie was inaugurated as the occupant in March last. It is a 
reproach to us, that no similar professorship exists in any 
American college except the State University of Iowa. 

The success of Normal Schools where they have been longest 
maintained and are best known demonstrates their utility. In 
Europe, the experiment has been tried in so many countries, 
under circumstances so diverse, and with results so favorable, 
as to commend them strongly to public favor. Special prepa- 
ration is everywhere required for teaching, and it is a perma- 
nent business. Once licensed and located, teachers are seldom 
changed, and never re-examined. A license once given lasts 
for a life-time. Teaching even a private school without a 



92 NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

certificate of competency is prohibited under heavy penalties. 
The normal programme of study is liberal and comprehen- 
sive. The following is the course of study at the Pedagogium 
of Vienna : 

Language. — The German Language and Literature, the French 
Language, Grammar Exercises in Dictation, Composition and 
Conversation, Translation and Analysis of the French Classics. 

Mathematics. — Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry. 

Natural History. — Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Human Som- 
atalogy, Morphology, Crystallography, Geology, Physics, Chem- 
istry, Exercises in Laboratory. 

Geography and History. — General and Special Geography, 
including Map-drawing and Statistical, Physical, Economical and 
Political Geography, History, General and Special. 

Art Studies. — Design, Linear and Artistic, Figure, Ornament, 
Architecture, Blackboard Drawing. The Study of Forms, Model- 
ing, Geometrical Constructions, Relief Maps, etc. 

Pedagogy. — Psychology and Logic. Methodology, or Methods 
of Instruction, Educational systems, History of Pedagogy, Prac- 
tice of Pedagogy. 

Dr. Charles Saffray, an eminent Frenchman, who inspected 
our schools as well as the Centennial Exposition, justly crit- 
icised our methods of examining, certificating and changing 
teachers, saying, •" The teacher should be chosen for his merit, 
proved by diplomas and rigid examinations, and he should 
feel sure of preserving his position as long as he remains 
worthy thereof. As long as the United States do not assure to 
teachers impartiality of nomination and promotion, permanence 
of functions and security for the future, they will too often 
have only inferior or mediocre teachers, and in spite of the 
most flattering programmes, popular instruction will remain, in 
many districts, quite insufficient." M. Buisson, charged with 
the duty of collecting the educational statistics of France, in an 
able report to the Minister of Public Instruction in the main 
complimentary to us, says, "The insufficient training of teachers 
has hitherto been one of the greatest deficiencies in the Amer- 
ican school system. The continued change of teachers and the 
short period during which the majority of them remain in their 
profession, explain sufficiently why the results are not in pro- 
portion to the generous expenditures of the country." 

In the Normal Schools of Europe, pedagogics, or the science 
and art of teaching, are taught both in theory and practice. 



STOKMAL SCHOOLS. 93 

Teaching there assumes the character of a distinct profession. 
No profession more needs a special school for instruction in its 
appropriate science and methods. The difficulty of the science 
is equaled only by its importance. It is based on the most 
comprehensive of all sciences — the philosophy of the mind. 
It inquires what is the mind, and especially, what is the 
juvenile mind. It is harder to measure the mind of a child 
than of the adult. What are its powers and organic laws of 
growth? "What is the relation of the mind to the body and 
the mutual influence of the highest training of each upon 
the other? What hygienic rules should be adopted as to 
ventilation, posture, light, care of the eyes, and school gym- 
nastics? What is the one great end which all means and 
methods should subserve ? What is the order as to time in 
which the different faculties are to be developed? What is 
the proper succession of studies? What are the special 
adaptations of each study to particular necessities and facul- 
ties of the juvenile mind ? What lessons does the Kindergarten 
system suggest to the teacher of the public school in regard 
to the laws of childhood, — activity, love of freedom, need of 
occupation, love of knowledge, or curiosity, love of play (and 
how to utilize this instinctive desire and make play an edu- 
cator, using direction rather than repression), love of power, 
of achievement, and invention. The practical lesson here, 
alike in play, work or study, is never to do anything for a 
child which he can reasonably be stimulated to do for himself, 
so that learning by doing, he may easily gain true self-reliance. 
By what incentives may youth be best stimulated tostudious- 
ness and right conduct? The philosophy of motive is of great 
practical importance. Here the teacher should not practice 
empirically, for children need impulse even more than mere 
instruction. In the Normal School the skill and experience 
of experts are made available for novices. Principles and 
methods learned in long personal service, or drawn from wide 
observation of the mistakes of others, are given to beginners. 
They here learn with what tools they are to work, and how to 
handle them ; for what ends they are to work, and on what 
materials — the plastic faculties of childhood ; what difficulties 
are to be overcome and what mistakes to be avoided. 



91 NOEMAL SCHOOLS. 

The necessity of the special training of teachers may be 
inferred from the fact that the first steps of the pupil are the 
most important, as well as the most difficult. Lasting aversion 
to books often springs from poor processes in the primary 
school, where the question is early decided whether study 
shall be a pleasure and a privilege, or a dreaded task. The 
school is what the teacher makes it. The juvenile mind is wax 
in his hand. To know by what hidden avenues to enter the 
juvenile mind, and when there, what secret springs of thought 
and action to touch, is the privilege only of the trained teacher. 
Pupils often grope in doubt and dejection who might walk in 
light and joy. They need to be taught how to learn as much 
as what to learn. As the great majority of pupils are in the 
common schools, our Normal Schools aim to train teachers, not 
so much for High Schools, of which there are comparatively 
few, as for the district schools and the several departments of 
our graded schools, where skill and tact are specially needed. 
Bungling processes are most disastrous in the primary school. 
Blundering at the start has often put out the eyes of the mind. 
A believer in the doctrine "the physician born, not made," (a 
motto on a par with " the teacher born, not made "), once said 
to a distinguished occulist, who was advocating the necessity 
of thorough training in his profession: "Why, doctor, you 
have attained the highest skill without such aid." The occulist 
replied, "But I spoiled a bushel of eyes in acquiring the art, 
and now I can teach others to avoid my blunders." Con- 
trasts most marked I often witness in schools similar in other 
conditions, except that an expert teaches the one, and a novice 
experiments in the other. In the one you see order, interest, 
activity, cheerfulness, and the joy of conscious progress ; in the 
other, confusion, whispering and mischief, or listlessness, indo- 
lence, and dislike of study. 

To the objection sometimes heard that the State should no 
more undertake to train teachers than lawyers or doctors, I 
reply that trained teachers are essential to the success of public 
schools, and the experience of Europe for more than a century 
proves that they can be secured in due numbers only by the 
aid of the State. The emoluments of other callings invite a 
full supply of candidates. The number of teachers far exceeds 



NORMAL SCHOOLS. 95 

that of all other professions combined, but the motive to ex- 
pensive preparation is less, as the compensation and average 
time of service are relatively small. An adequate supply of 
teachers, as of military officers, can only be secured by State 
aid. The military expenses of all the European nations, and 
even of the American States, vastly exceed the expendi- 
tures for Normal Schools. The chief advantage of expensive 
military encampments and establishments is the training and 
experience there given to the officers. While liberal expendi- 
tures are properly made for their drill, shall not the State also 
train the teachers who are to shape and control the destinies of 
the coming generation ? Shall the State maintain organiza- 
tions to teach the art of war, and train men how to kill, but do 
nothing to prepare teachers for the higher work of giving life 
and culture to the mind. 

The Normal School is an important factor in educational 
progress. Its instructors aim to keep abreast of the educational 
movements of the day, to become acquainted with new ideas 
and methods, new plans and adaptations in school management, 
apparatus, appliances, and text-books. It is their duty to give 
the benefit of such investigations to their pupils who, as gradu- 
ates, may carry progressive ideas into the rural districts. 

Extensive observation of schools of all grades, and consulta- 
tions with friends of education in some twenty different States, 
have confirmed my conviction that Normal Schools have 
greatly improved the condition of our Public Schools, intro- 
duced more independence of text-books in recitations, and 
better methods of teaching, influence, and discipline. The 
diffusion of normal methods by the graduates has been much 
wider than the circle of their direct labors. The improved 
processes adopted by one normal graduate are often introduced 
into many neighboring schools. 



96 VILLAGE IMPKOVEMENT. 



VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT. 

The growing interest in village improvement during the last 
year has resulted in the organization of many new associations 
for furthering this work. A little reflection and foresight will 
show that no rural community can afford to be without such 
an association, whose influence, as already seen in many towns, 
reaches far beyond the first intention. It includes not only 
public ways, securing better roads, streets and parks, school- 
houses and churches, but extends its influence to private 
grounds, introducing new shrubbery, hedges, lawns, flower- 
plots, shade trees, improved fruit trees, better style of building 
and^ painting houses, the adoption of neutral tints in place of 
glaring white, or still worse, the old red. A good example is 
here peculiarly fruitful, and one improvement serves as a pre- 
cedent for many others, and the happiest result of all is to fill 
a town with beautiful homes. 

It is a hopeful sign that modern civilization relates specially 
to the homes and social life of the people, to their health, 
comfort and thrift, their intellectual and moral advancement. 
In earlier times and other lands, men were counted in the 
aggregate and valued as they helped to swell the revenues or 
retinues of kings and nobles. The government was the unit, 
and the individual only added one to the roll of serfs or 
soldiers. With us the individual is the unit, and "the govern- 
ment is for the people and by the people." 

It is also a good omen, that public taste in the embellish- 
ment of rural homes and villages is of late rapidly advancing, 
and that the rich and varied charms of the country are drawing 
thoughtful and wealthy men to the simpler and purer en- 
joyments and employments of rural life. With, this growth of 
public taste the day is not distant when beautiful country seats 
and villages will abound throughout our State. Bacon well 
says, " God Almighty first planted a garden and made this the 
purest of human pleasures." A taste for rural adornment once 
awakened becomes a source of fascinating enjoyment. 

A beautiful home and grounds exert an elevating and 
"humanizing influence not only upon the owners or occupants 



VILLAGE IMPEOVEMENT. 97 

but upon all the neighborhood, for happily this taste is conta- 
gious. An elegant dwelling fitly surrounded by sylvan 
attractions and adornment is a contribution to the refinement, 
good order, morality and prosperity of any community, improv- 
ing their taste and ministering to their enjoyment. On the other 
hand, a people content to dwell in huts and cabins, grow 
barbarous in their tastes and habits, as all history proves. 
They soon become ragged and dirty in their dress, uncouth in 
manners, coarse and low in their habits, brutal and cruel in 
character. Without aspiration for a better life, they can make 
no progress in civilization, education or art. But improvement 
in their homes, grounds and dress always accompanies, if it 
does not produce an advance in civilization. A tasteful and 
inviting home and a beautiful village are efficient instruments 
of civilization and education. There is protection as well as 
education in the fervent love of home with its sacred associa- 
tions. Attachment to one's natal soil is an antidote to the 
restless, roaming, migratory spirit of our youth, as well as a 
safe-guard from temptation. Every influence should be com- 
bined to strengthen their domestic sentiments and attachments. 
The embellishments of the house and grounds are important 
helps in this direction. It has been well said, " The homes of 
America are the hope of America." However humble the 
cottage, it may be neat and tasteful, so that both in its exterior 
and interior form and life it shall be the symbol of all that is 
beautiful, noble and good. When one's home becomes the 
Eden of taste, interest and joy, those healthful local attach- 
ments are formed which bind one to the soil he has made 
beautiful, and then to the State and the country, for patriotism 
hinges on love of home. 

Whatever embellishes one's home, increasing his local 
attachments and beautifying his domestic life, strengthens his 
love of country and nurtures the nobler elements of his nature. 
On the other hand, one without local attachments can have no 
genuine patriotism. As happy in one place as another, he is 
like a tree planted in a tub, portable indeed, but at the expense 
of growth and strength. 

Not the least of the good work initiated by Linnaeus was the 
" Shady Eenaissance," so-called, or the new era of arboriculture 



98 VILLAGE IMPEOVEMENT. 

and rural adornment. Humboldt was one of many who 
caught this contagious love of trees, and his words on this 
theme are as worthy to be memorized by the youth of America 
as they have been so generally in Germany. To give a few 
fragments from Humboldt: "Trees have about them some- 
thing beautiful and attractive even to the fancy. Since they 
cannot change their places, they are witnesses of all that takes 
place about them, and reaching sometimes a great age become 
historical monuments. Man is as a butterfly in length of life 
and size compared to those giants which continue to grow in 
strength and bulk for thousands of years. If our eyes were 
microscopic and the integuments of plants were transparent, 
the vegetable kingdom would by no means present that aspect 
of immobility and repose under which it appears to our senses." 
There is a sturdy grandeur in a venerable tree which has 
withstood the storms of centuries. Some of the trees of 
California are believed to be over two thousand years old, and 
the venerable chestnut of Mt. JEtna is believed to be over 
thirty-six hundred years old. The rural and suburban adorn- 
ment now the pride and glory of so many beautiful places in 
Germany, of which Dresden is a specimen, is the fruit of this 
revived love of arboriculture largely due to the influence of 
Humboldt. 

In some portions of Germany, every landholder was formerly 
required to plant trees along the highways so far as his fields 
extended. Happy would it be for us, if the sovereigns of the 
soil would each make such a law for himself. Happy also, if 
the law of usage, fashion, or interest — as did the civil law there 
— required that every young man, before he married should 
plant a tree. The eve of marriage is a fit time for a young 
man practically to realize that trees form the most beautiful 
drapery that adorns the earth, and thus to awaken a love of 
nature, perhaps, hitherto dormant, and open a new avenue both 
to his mind and heart. 

An annual festival under the direction of the Village Im- 
provement Association tends to deepen and sustain public 
interest in its work. In some towns literary exercises, ad- 
dresses, a poem, and music, fill the programme ; in others a 
collation becomes another bond of union and fellowship. In 



VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT. 99 

the rigid, and sometimes frigid, state of rural life, often found 
in New England, we need to cultivate the social amenities and 
learn the art of "turning work into play. 1 ' The supposed 
monotony and dullness of country life drive many to the city. 
It is wise to multiply occasions for social enjoyment. An 
arbor-day festival may help counteract the tendency of rural 
life to isolation and seclusion, lifting out of the ruts of a dull 
plodding monotony, fraternizing the people, bringing all classes 
together on common ground where political and religious dif- 
ferences are forgotten. The rural laborers in Switzerland and 
Germany socialize far more than American farmers. Their 
festive spirit is a strongly -marked feature of their character. 
It is manifested in the family, in neighborhood greetings and 
meetings, in schools, in rifle feasts, in processions and various 
social gatherings. They have a passion for nature, and love 
to frequent their beautiful groves and gardens, for parks or 
woods abound in or near their cities and towns. This genial 
spirit is everywhere fostered by music — both vocal and instru- 
mental. As a result, there is an inexpressible something in the 
German character that carries mirthful and happy childhood 
into old age. giving an added charm to social life, and lightness 
and cheer to sober work. 

One of the surest ways to build up our country towns is to 
dignify labor, and improve and elevate industrial pursuits, 
especially agriculture. Farming is the leading and most essen- 
tial business of mankind. Its depreciation would ultimately 
demoralize the nation. This was the original and divinely 
appointed calling of man. It is the ground work of civilized 
society, and the basis of all progress. On its prosperity hang 
the hopes of our race, far more than any other calling. It must 
provide the means of sustaining an increasing population, or 
there can be no growth. Commerce and manufactures depend 
upon it more than it does upon them. 

In the best days of the Koman Empire, agriculture was 
honorable. It was a sign of her degeneracy, when in the 
progress of centralization and corruption her labor became 
servile and the word rural became synonymous with rustic. 
Centralization is now our danger as it was of the old Eoman 
world and as it has been and will continue to be the bane of 



100 VILLAGE IMPKOVEMENT. 

France, so long as it can be said, " Paris is France, or France is 
Paris." The transfer of the capital to Versailles leaves Paris 
still imperial. England on the other hand wisely magnifies 
the country. Great as is London, it does not, like Paris, 
dominate the land. Its most illustrious seats of learning are 
removed far from the metropolis. The rival educational asso- 
ciations which seek to control the plans of public instruction 
have their respective seats in Birmingham and Manchester. 
Public sentiment as manifested in Sheffield, Bradford, or Not- 
tingham, has its due weight in the direction of affairs. London 
exerts no overshadowing influence in proportion to its numbers. 
To own a homestead in the country is justly the pride 
of the Englishman, for England is a country of surpassing 
beauty. The whole country is like a boundless Park, every- 
where under the highest culture. Landscape gardening is 
there held as a fine art. In her parks and beautiful homes, 
England is richer than any other country under the sun. 
For her upper classes, it is a kingdom of stately rural homes, 
with elegant grounds studded with patrician trees, their 
tropics imprisoned in glass, and all enriched by ancestral 
treasures and associations. The ivy everywhere adorning their 
ancient mansions, covering all but the windows with its dense 
garniture of foliage, gives a most picturesque aspect even to 
the oldest buildings. The unequalled adornment of England's 
fair domains tells the secret of the Englishman's ardent love 
for rural life and rural pursuits. Mrs. Hemans well says: 

'■' The stately Homes of England. 
How beautifully they stand 
Amidst their tall ancestral trees 
On all the pleasant land." 



TREE -PL AN TING. 101 

TKEE-PLANTING. 

Public interest in the subject of rural adornment is still 
increasing. The plan for centennial tree-planting proposed in 
March last was received with unexpected favor, and the two 
hundred dollars offered in small prizes for its encouragement 
was all claimed. As the tree -planting in this state last spring 
exceeded that of any former ten years, many hitherto leafless 
and unsightly school lots will in due time be adorned by 
maples, elms, ash or other trees. The confidence that thou- 
sands of children will hereafter enjoy their shade is ample 
compensation for my part in this work. In future visits to the 
towns of Connecticut, I shall take special pleasure in meeting 
and greeting my young tree-planting friends. This good work 
should continue till not a school-house, dwelling or street is 
left without the simple and grand adornment of shade trees.* 

More attention should be given to the adornment of school 
grounds. The site should be high and dry, and if practicable, 
not less than one acre in extent. Several millions of dollars 
are expended annually in America in building and repairing 
school houses. While there is great liberality in regard to the 
buildings, too little is done for the improvement of the grounds. 
In no way can the surroundings of our school houses be made 
attractive so simply and economically as by setting out suit- 
able shade trees. To encourage the continuance of this good 
work so well begun last year, brief quotations are given from a 
few of the many notices of this " Connecticut Movement." The 
Boston Post says: "This tree-planting suggestion has taken 
very widely with the people, and is working its way across the 

* The following law passed by the General Assembly of 1877, designed to 
encourage tree-planting, shows a growing appreciation of the economic bearings of 
this subject. "Whosoever shall plant any land in this State not heretofore 
woodland, (the actual value of which at the time of planting does not exceed 
fifteen dollars per acre,) to timber trees of any of the following kinds, to wit : 
chestnut, hickory, ash, white oak, sugar maple, European larch, white pine, or 
spruce, a number not less than twelve hundred to the acre ; and after such plan- 
tation of trees shall have grown on an average six feet in height, the owner of 
such plantation of trees may appear before the Board of Relief in any town in 
which such plantations of trees may be located, and on proving the herein-men- 
tioned conditions, such plantations of trees shall be subject to exemption from all 
taxation whatever, for a period of ten years next thereafter." 
6 



102 TREE-PLANTING. 

continent. This way of commemorating the year we are pass- 
ing through, is free from all objections of partizanship and 
passion, and is full of associations that will make sweet the 
memory of this time to the latest posterity. There is a senti- 
ment of genuine peace in this sylvan proposal that brings a sort 
of healing on its wings, and helps to root us in the soil firmly, 
as if we loved as well as owned it. Let the planting and care 
of trees become a passion with our people, and the love of 
shade and leafy landscapes will soften the hardness that is so 
often charged against our common character. We do not ad- 
vocate this plan as if this year were to witness its completion, but 
as a beginning of a change in the public taste. 11 

The New York Evening Post closes a lengthy advocacy of 
this plan with the following paragraph : " It will be a glorious 
thing for future generations if this centennial epoch witnesses a 
genuine revival of forestry throughout our country. The ban- 
ners of advancing civilization have too long borne the device of 
the axe ; their practical if not their poetical significance would 
be enhanced by the substitution of the spade and pruning knife." 

Tree-planting is fitted to give a lesson of forethought to the 
juvenile mind. Living solely in the present and for the pres- 
ent, too many youths will sow, only when they can quickly 
reap. A meager crop, soon in hand, outweighs a golden har- 
vest long in maturing. As short-sightedness is the danger of 
youth, they should learn that forecasting the future is the con- 
dition of wisdom. Arboriculture is a discipline in foresight, 
for it is always planting for the future and often for the distant 
future. Washington Irving well says of tree-planting, " There 
is a grandeur of thought connected with this heroic line of 
husbandry. It is worthy of liberal and free-born and aspiring 
men. He who plants an oak looks forward to future ages and 
plants for posterity, exulting in the idea that the acorn which 
he has buried in the earth shall grow up into a lofty pile and 
shall keep on flourishing and increasing and benefitting man- 
kind long after he has ceased to tread his paternal fields." It 
would be a grand achievement if a genuine interest in arbor- 
iculture can be awakened in all our towns. To this end our 
pupils should observe all our common trees so as readily to 
recognize them by any one of the six most distinctive marks. 
If fit lessons were early given on the varieties and value, the 



TKEE-PLANTTNG. 103 

beauty and grandeur of our majestic trees, our youth could 
hardly fail to admire and enjoy them, and then to plant and 
protect them. If private taste, public spirit, town pride and 
the sentiment of patriotism to the State could be duly enlisted 
in connection with the certainty of pecuniary profit and the 
manifold personal advantage of every citizen, our streets would 
become bowers of beauty and verdure. Nothing can add so 
great a charm to our country roads or village streets, as long and 
magnificent avenues of stately elms and maples, such as may 
already be seen in many beautiful towns of New England. But 
there remain some desolate, neglected, repulsive, leafless villages, 
where taste and trees, and shrubbery, hedges, creeping vines and 
a park of green, would make the wilderness blossom as the rose. 

Among the memories of my boyhood, while under thirteen 
years of age, no day has recurred with more frequency and 
satisfaction than that devoted to tree planting. The maples 
then set out before the homestead, in Litchfield County, are 
now beautiful and stately trees. They have paid me a thou- 
sandfold for the work they cost, and added new attractions to 
the cherished spot to which I count it a privilege to make an 
annual visit. This personal incident is given to suggest how 
easily our youth may now provide for a like grateful experience. 

There is a genuine pleasure in the parentage of trees, whether 
forest, fruit or ornamental — a pleasure growing with their 
growth. They bring rich filial returns. A noble tree is one 
of the grandest products of nature. It was the trees of his own 
planting at Sunnyside on the Hudson, together with the beauty 
of the surrounding landscape, that led Washington Irving to 
say: " After all my wanderings, I return to this spot with a 
heart-felt preference for it over all others in the world. ' r It 
was the simple beauty he had created at Marshfield, the grassy 
lawns, the shaded approaches, the hundreds of trees of his 
planting, and especially the noble old elm in front of his man- 
sion, that bound Daniel Webster so strongly to that sequestered 
spot. The multitude of elms planted by James Hillhouse are 
beautiful monuments of his taste and foresight, as well as the 
central attraction of the far-famed City of Elms. 

The charm of Abbotsford — the grand Mecca of Scotland — 
comes largely from its beautiful ivy and shrubbery, and the 
thousands of trees planted by the hand of its illustrious pro- 



104 TREE-PLANTING. 

prietor. In his diary, Sir Walter Scott says, " My heart clings 
to the place I have created. There is scarce a tree in it that 
does not owe its being to me. * * * Once well planted, a 
tree will grow while you are sleeping, and it is almost the only 
thing that needs no tending." With a little foresight, man may 
thus enlist nature in his constant service for long years to come. 

If I can assist in organizing such Associations in other towns, 
either by advice or by a lecture on " Tree-planting and Eural 
Life," or "What a Man Owes to the Town he Lives in," the 
service will be cheerfully rendered. 

The following practical suggestions in regard to the selection 
and planting of trees, by Donald G. Mitchell, are of special 
value in this connection. " Mr. B. Gr. Northrop has caused to 
be distributed among the schools of our State a circular sug- 
gesting tree-planting along highways, and in our villages, as a 
good centennial move and as one which will carry its own 
record down in graceful and cheery way for a century to come. 
The idea is a capital one, and we trust may be acted upon 
throughout New England. Mr. Northrop specifies in his 
circular, the elm, maple, ash, white-oak and walnut, with the 
conditions that the trees should be not less than nine feet in 
height. This height is undoubtedly requisite for street plant- 
ing ; but boys should understand that within enclosures, and 
in protected positions, a smaller tree will serve ; and, from the 
larger chance of securing good rootlets, will make, very likely, 
a more vigorous growth than the larger ones. To the list we 
should add, without hesitation, the American linden (or bass- 
wood) as being one of our finest shade trees — when planted 
upon rich alluvial soil. For gravelly and dry soils, the hard 
maple will prove the best subject for transplanting. In moist 
low ground, the elm and red maple are most desirable. The 
oak and walnut are very impatient of removal from the forest ; 
and to a certain degree also, the ash. If taken from a nursery, 
however, where the tap root has been severed by such trans- 
planting, all will thrive. But if the oak and walnut be removed 
from the woods with no more care than is usually given to the 
transplanting of the elm, the boys may count upon losing at 
least five out of six. It is a very common practice, in removal 
of maples, to cut the top squarely off some nine feet above 
ground — an amputation which the maple bears very well; but, 



TREE-PLANTING. 105 

in such event, one or two strong leading shoots are apt to start 
from the top, and growing very evenly in strength expose the 
tree to great risk of splitting asunder at some future time. This 
danger can be remedied by cutting away all but one leading 
shoot, which will after a time come to cover wholly the old 
place of excision, and give to the tree its normal form. A 
siDgle leading shoot, moreover, prevents that bushy growth 
which is often urged against the sugar maple, as giving too dense 
a shade. Maples should be planted at least thirty feet apart, 
and elms fifty to sixty for fair and full development. In view 
of the difficulties attending the removal of the oak and walnut, 
we should not advise the boys to cope with these for roadside 
planting. The size requisite for such a position will involve a 
pruning of limbs and roots, that will almost certainly result in 
their dying. Smaller ones, however — of say an inch diameter 
at base — may with due care be established near the homestead, 
and will prove a charming memorial of the centennial year." 

In some Western States, an arbor-day has been legalized, not 
as a holiday, but what is better, a day of " united workers " in 
tree planting, which is encouraged by a pecuniary reward. 
What could be better fitted both to dignify and stimulate this 
grand movement than for a great State to give its sanction and 
bounty to arbor-culture, impressing the young and the old 
with the value and the beauty of trees, alike for economical 
purposes and for shade and adornment. This example of the 
West is worthy of imitation. An arbor-day ought to be estab- 
lished in every State. Its influence would be beneficent in the 
Eastern as well as in the prairie States. The spectacle of the 
people of an entire State devoting annually a given day to such 
a common interest, would itself be an inspiration, developing 
State pride and public spirit, and promoting local fellowship 
and attachments. 

There is an economic value in trees far exceeding the cost of 
planting and fostering them. JSTo investment will ultimately 
pay so well as the money and labor expended in tree-planting. 
This subject is highly appreciated in Europe, where Schools of 
Forestry have long been maintained, contributing widely to 
the culture of trees and forests. Large tracts of sterile hill- 
sides and otherwise worn-out and denuded lands have been 
reclaimed by the planting of trees, especially the conifers. The 



106 NEGLECTED OHILDEEN. 

Scotch pine and European larch, raised from seed at trifling 
cost, now enrich and adorn myriads of acres abroad. These 
conifers are justly becoming favorites in this country, particu- 
larly the European larch, which has long been the great timber 
tree of Europe, combining rapid growth with durability. The 
Boston & Albany Kailroad Company, after the trial of larch 
sleepers for fifteen years, pronounce this wood as durable as the 
red cedar. The President of the Illinois Central Kailway, hav- 
ing examined the larch forests of Europe and also the quality 
of this timber as grown in the Western States, has offered to 
transport the European larch free of charge to any point on 
their lines, provided they are to be planted in the vicinity of 
the same. Many millions of the Scotch pine, the best tree for 
poor soils, and the European larch are now growing in the 
West. Id the new Arboretum belonging to Harvard College, 
located in Brookline and including one hundred and thirty acres, 
are now growing over two hundred thousand small trees, started 
from the seed, including ninety-three varieties of evergreens, 
four hundred and fifty varieties of deciduous trees and shrubs, 
and thirty-four of oaks. Specimens of the European larch five 
years from the seed may there be seen, ranging from seven to 
ten feet in height. Its conical shape, regular branches and light 
green leaves make it very desirable for an ornamental tree. 
George B. Emerson, LL.D., author of an elaborate work on 
a rp^ rp reeg an( j Sh raDS f Massachusetts," has imported and 
planted this year over thirty thousand of the European larch of 
two years' growth from the seed. Last season Connecticut was 
preeminent in tree-planting. Massachusetts now takes the lead. 
Mr. C. S. Sargeant, Director of the Arboretum of Harvard Col- 
lege, estimates that over one million of trees will be planted in 
that State this year. 

NEGLECTED OHILDEEN. 

The gain in attendance already secured amply compensates 
for the work in this direction and invites its vigorous prose- 
cution. In my visits to towns, schools, and factories, and in 
public lectures, the needs of the neglected children are kept 
in view. The cordial cooperation of the leading manufac- 
turers of the State in securing the school attendance of the 
children in their employ is gratefully acknowledged. The 



POINTS OF SUPERIORTY IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS. 107 

chief trouble is not with the large manufacturers, but with the 
far greater number who employ a few children in shops, or 
stores, or a single one on the farm or in the family. There are 
also, in some towns, a few families so degraded by intemperance 
and its attendant vices that their children are little, if at all, 
above barbarism. The fact needs to be re-stated that our 
law in regard to non-attendance applies not to manufacturers 
only, but to merchants, mechanics, farmers, and all employers 
of children, and should be executed with equal strictness 
towards individuals and companies. I respectfully solicit local 
cooperation in carrying out the provisions of this law — which 
has so manifestly met the approbation of the people of this 
State without reference to party or sect. No opposition to 
this law has ever been expressed, so far as my knowledge 
extends, either in the legislature, in the press, or in any public 
meeting. But this rigid law should not relax our efforts 
at persuasion — in making our schools so attractive and their 
substantial advantages so inviting that none can afford to lose 
them — so that attendance shall be regarded as a privilege 
rather than a legal necessity. Much as has been done, there is 
need of better results. We may not rest, so long as there 
remain any neglected children. I therefore again request all 
persons who know of any instance of the employment of children 
under fourteen years of age who have not attended school the 
time required by law, or of any children growing up in indo- 
lence and degradation amid intemperance and vice, to notify 
me of such fact, giving the names and location of the employers 
of the children and parents. The friends of education through- 
out the State are invited to communicate all facts as to non- 
attendance. The letters sent me in response to a similar request 
last year received prompt attention. I should regard a journey 
to the remotest part of the State amply compensated, if thereby 
but a single child were brought to school. By the cordial 
cooperation of teachers and school officers, a grand result in 
this direction can be accomplished. 

POINTS OF SUPEEIOETY IN AMEEICAN SCHOOLS. 

The American Educational Exhibit was worthy of a free 
people who could afford to furnish a just basis of comparison, 
conscious of defects and not hiding them, and mindful of excel- 



108 POINTS OF SUPERIORITY IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS. 

lences which needed no heralding. Compared with European 
schools and exhibits, some of our defects were made conspicu- 
ous. As it is always more profitable, if less agreeable, to under- 
stand our deficiencies than our excellencies, I have thus far 
dwelt mainly on our imperfections and the lessons we may and 
ought to learn from European schools. It would have been easy 
to show the points of superiority in American schools, among 
which I should enumerate : 1, School architecture ; 2, School 
furniture ; 3, Better and more ample black-board surface ; 4, 
Ventilation of school houses ; 5, Mental combinations in arith- 
metic ; 6, Beading. The Americans are better trained in read- 
ing, and as a matter of fact read more books and papers than any 
other people. The Lord Bishop of Manchester says, " The Amer- 
icans are the most generally educated and intelligent people on 
the face of the earth. They are emphatically a reading people, 
and show great avidity for news and are posted up in current 
events. The number of daily newspapers in the United States is 
quite extraordinary. Everybody reads these papers." 7. Map- 
drawing. The Map-drawing from memory by American pupils 
as shown at the Centennial, especially in the New Jersey Ex- 
hibit, was superior to anything I saw in any schools in Europe. 
8. Free schools ; 9. Coeducation of the sexes ; 10. Female 
teachers. In Germany the school-master is still the general and 
almost exclusive term. 11. Better education of girls ; 12. Better 
incentives to study ; 13. Better methods of religious instruction ; 
14. Better text-books, and with superior illustrations ; 15. More 
school and public libraries. My limits permit no amplification 
on these points. The outcome of all is greater independence, 
energy and enterprise, self-reliance and self-command, and more 
of genuine manhood than can be found among any other people. 
When comparing the aim and influence of both the educational 
and civil institutions of Europe and America, Professor Agassiz 
often said: "After staying twenty-five years in this country, I 
have repeatedly asked myself what was the difference between 
the institutions of the old world and those of America; and I 
have found the answer in a few words. In Europe everything 
is done to preserve and maintain the rights of the few ; in 
America, everything is done to make a man of him who has any 
of the elements of manhood in him.'' 1 





LESSONS 


FROM 




EUROPEAN 


SCHOOLS 


AND 




THE AMERICAN 


CENTENNIAL. 


BY 


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BIRDSEY GRANT 


NORTHROP, 


Secretary of Connecticut 


Board, of Education. 




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